


Inheritance

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: F/M, Family Reunions, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-17 09:44:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12362988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: When Yevgeny is in his first year of college, a man contacts him claiming to have information about his biological father.





	1. Chapter 1

Yev stared down at the cheap, plasticky surface of the diner’s table, one hand curled around his half-empty, quickly cooling cup of coffee. Without really thinking about it he licked his index finger and pressed it into the sprinkling of sugar where he’d been clumsy in sweetening his coffee, and then brought his finger up to suck the granules off it. The waitress gave him an odd look as she passed, and he flushed self-consciously.

He was early, but he was still antsy - watching the door as different people filtered in and out. One o’clock came and went, and then it was one minute past, two minutes, three minutes…

The door opened and a man entered, looking around apprehensively. He clocked Yev sitting alone at the booth and froze, his expression stunned. Even from far away, Yev could see the man’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat.

He approached slowly, giving Yev time to measure him up. He was in his thirties, with a full head of red hair and a strong jaw, wearing a worn black leather jacket over a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt. His face was rough with stubble, and there were crows feet crinkling the corners of his eyes. He stopped at the table, but didn’t sit down right away.

“Wow,” he said softly, then seemed to shake himself out of a trance. “I mean… hi. Thanks for coming.”

“Are you him?” Yev asked, in clipped tones. The man furrowed his brow in response, so Yev pressed on. “You said you had information about my biological father. Are you him?” He clenched his jaw, determined not to show weakness.

“Oh… no,” the man replied, sliding into the booth opposite Yev. “Wow,” he breathed again, staring into Yev’s face, searching it. “Jesus, you look like him, though. Except the hair.”

Yev’s hand twitched as he felt the urge to run his fingers through his sandy blond hair self-consciously. “You know him, then?”

“Yeah, I…”

“Hi!” the waitress interjected, popping up seemingly out of nowhere with a smile on her face, a coffee pot in one hand and a pad in the other. “What can I get you?” she asked, topping up Yev’s cup of coffee without asking him if he wanted a refill.

“Oh, um, just coffee, thanks. And a slice of pie. Do you want anything?” he asked, directing the question at Yev.

Yev shook his head. He didn’t plan to stay here for too long.

“So how much do you already know?” the red-haired man asked once the waitress had retreated again, threading his fingers together and resting them on the table. “Did Svetlana ever tell you about your father or…”

“First off, I already have a father,” Yev interrupted brusquely. “I just want to make that clear. I’m not here because I need a father figure in my life. I just want answers.” He chewed his lower lip, then asked, “What’s his name?”

“Mickey. Mickey Milkovich.”

There it was. _Mickey. Mickey Milkovich._ The name Yev had asked his mom for a thousand times, just laid out on the table like that. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, started tapping at the screen.

“What are you doing?” the red-haired man asked, sounding somewhat alarmed.

“Looking him up.”

“No, don’t…”

The waitress returned with a cup of coffee and a slice of pie just as the man reached out to grab Yev’s wrist. She paused, then evidently decided it wasn’t worth her time asking what was going on. She set the pie and the drink down next to the man’s outstretched arm and then quickly walked away to tend another table.

“Please don’t,” the man begged, once she was out of earshot. “Please. The reason I came here was so that you could find out about your dad from me, not from the internet.”

“And who the hell are you?” Yev demanded roughly.

“Ian, I’m Ian.”

“No, I mean who are you to _him_? To my… biological father.”

Ian sat back a little, apparently trusting Yev not to dive for his phone again. “I’m his partner,” he explained gently.

“Business partner?” Yev asked, though he could tell by the way Ian had said the word that he was talking about a different kind of partner.

“No, his _partner_ , you know? We’re together. We’re a couple.”

Yev raised an eyebrow at that. “So my biological father is… bi?”

“He’s gay. We both are.” Ian looked at him searchingly. “Wow. I guess Svetlana really didn’t tell you anything, did she?”

Yev took a deep breath and stretched a little, blowing the air out again dramatically as he leaned back in his seat. “All she ever told me was that it didn’t matter who my biological father was, and I shouldn’t ask about him because it upset Dad. But I asked Dad and he said he really didn’t mind. So what’s the headline?”

Ian didn’t seem ready for the questioning pause that followed. “The…?”

“The headline, you know. What’s so bad about him that my mom never wanted to even tell me his name? Why didn’t you want me looking him up?”

Ian’s face tightened minutely in a wince. “OK, I guess I’ll get that out of the way first,” he sighed. “Look, the first thing you need to know is… your dad didn’t abandon you. He didn’t want to leave you. He wasn’t just a one-night stand. He was around when you were a baby, I was too…”

“Wait, you were around?” Yev echoed, frowning.

“Yeah, we’ve been together a long time.” Ian smiled. “You’re a lot taller now.”

“Not that much taller,” Yev corrected grumpily. He had just turned nineteen and he’d pretty much accepted that this was as tall as he was ever going to get.

Ian laughed. “Yeah, sorry, you get that from your dad.”

“My biological father,” Yev corrected. He wanted to be firm on that point, but he regretted it a little when he saw Ian’s face fall.

“Right. Well, anyway, he was around for your first year but then… then he got sent to jail. Like I said, he didn’t wanna leave you…”

“What’d he do?” Yev interrupted. He wasn’t interested in the touchy-feely stuff. He just wanted facts.

Ian ruffled a hand through his hair and leaned back, sighing. “Nothing really. I mean, he kind of tried to kill my half-sister but then she tried to kill him right back, so technically they were even. But the cops got involved and, well, you know how that goes.”

“No. I don’t.” Yev’s mind was ticking fast, trying to process the information. “So, he’s in jail?”

Ian winced. “Not, uh. Not any more.”

“He got released?”

“No…”

Yev stared across the table, with only one option left in front of him. “He broke out,” he stated. “My biological father is a criminal who busted out of jail.” He huffed out a humorless laugh.

“That’s not who he is,” Ian argued, sounding pained. “He’s… he’s a good guy. If he hadn’t got sent to jail I think he would have been a good father.”

“The fact that he got sent to jail is what _makes_ him a bad father.”

Ian looked shocked at that, and then angry, and then sad. The two of them sat in silence for a few long moments, neither meeting the other’s eye. Then Yev stood up from the booth.

“Thanks,” he said curtly. “For telling me his name. That was all I wanted.”

He walked out of the diner, then, not looking back once.

 

* * *

 

Sarah’s bedroom was pretty, and busy. The walls were covered with posters of paintings by famous female artists, and strung all around with fairy lights. Her bookshelf was double-stacked - full of complex art theory textbooks that were incomprehensible to a math major like Yev, but with tattered _Harry Potter_ books and romance novels scattered among them. She laid with her head on Yev’s bare chest, stroking his arm idly, her hair tickling his nose.

“You’re not curious?” she asked, breaking the silence.

Yev stared up at the ceiling - the ugly, cracked white that was seemingly inescapable in dorm rooms. “Not any more,” he replied. “I know his name. I know he’s just a criminal lowlife. You should have seen the guy who showed up, his boyfriend. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, he tried to kill my sister but it’s no big deal.’ I swear to god…” He chuckled.

Sarah didn’t laugh, though. She was a bleeding heart liberal - always talking about privilege and class and how working class people often ended up in prison because of the circumstances they were born into, blah blah blah. That was how she and Yev had gotten together in the first place; they’d had a heated debate in their shared politics class, which had continued through the halls of the university after the class ended, and had continued all the way back to her bedroom. It had only ended when Yev dragged her in for a passionate, angry kiss, and they’d resumed the argument mid-coitus, with Sarah correcting him on some stupid minor statistic while she rode him triumphantly.

“That doesn’t, like, define him, though,” she said, her thumb caressing Yev’s bicep. “You don’t know what his life was like, how he ended up where he did…”

“The only way you become a criminal is by making bad choices,” Yev said firmly. “I don’t give a shit if you make twenty grand a year or a million. You still have to choose to break the law. No one forced him to try and kill someone.”

It was a moral lesson that Yev’s mother had impressed upon him from an early age. He had a powerful memory of being eight years old, hanging his head in shame as he stood next to the wreckage of a vase that had belonged to his grandmother. “No excuses,” his mother had snarled. “You chose to run around like a crazy animal. No one made you do that.” Then she’d sent him straight to bed, and taken away his video game privileges for a month.

Sarah sighed, rolled off his chest, and lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re so weird,” she said. “If I had a long-lost biological father I’d have so many questions. Like, he’s gay, right? So how’d he end up getting your mom pregnant? Do you think he looks like you?”

She reached over to the bedside table and grabbed her phone, and Yev was too distracted by the way the motion made her breasts move to realize what she was doing until it was too late.

“Wow,” Sarah said softly, staring at her phone screen, looking a little stunned. “Yeah, he looks like you.”

“What are you… how do you know?” Yev demanded, propping himself up on his elbows. Sarah angled the phone towards him, and suddenly Yev was looking at a photo of his biological father.

It was obviously the photo that was released when Mickey Milkovich escaped from prison. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and a hard expression and yes, he looked a hell of a lot like Yev, save for the fact that his hair was pure black instead of blond. Yev felt his chest tightening as he looked at the photo. This thug, this lowlife, this would-be murderer… _this_ was his biological father? Yev had inherited this guy’s genes?

“He’s cute,” Sarah commented playfully, nudging Yev in the ribs. He looked at her witheringly.

“You remember he tried to kill a woman, right?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t succeed so… you know, it’s all good.”

Yev tried and failed to hide a smirk of amusement at that. Sarah was always good at making him laugh, even when he was feeling down. He looked back at the photo of Mickey Milkovich, searching it like it could give him more answers. But he wasn’t even sure what his questions were.

“Do you want to meet him?” Sarah asked gently.

Yev didn’t answer at first. Then he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, staring at the posters on Sarah’s wall. “You know, when I was a kid and my mom or dad would yell at me or send me to my room, I used to wish that my real dad would show up,” he confessed. “You know, he’d pull up in a nice car outside our house and he’d be like, ‘No one yells at my kid, he’s coming with me!’ And he’d be like, I dunno, a rock star or something, or an actor.” He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “It was just dumb kid stuff.”

Sarah sat up as well, and leaned into Yev’s side, her head on his shoulder. “This is different,” she said. “You’re not looking for someone to replace your parents. Just… he’s your father.”

“He’s a fucking sperm donor,” Yev corrected, but he could hear the lack of conviction in his voice.

“That’s not what his boyfriend said. He said this Mickey guy looked after you when you were a baby, before he got sent to jail. And he must want to meet you, if he sent his boyfriend here.”

“I already have a father.”

“Yeah, and meeting this guy won’t change that.”

“Why are you pushing this?” Yev demanded, standing up and grabbing his jeans from the floor. He pulled them on in rough, jerky movements, then put on his T-shirt as well and started searching for his socks. He could only find one.

Sarah was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I just want you to be happy, Yevvy.”

“Well I’m not your fucking project,” he snapped, already hating himself for being an asshole to her. “I told you I didn’t want to meet him. So fucking drop it, OK?”

Sarah glared at him. “Don’t take your shit out on me,” she retorted. “You didn’t have to tell me about any of this, but since you did I figured you wanted my opinion.”

“Well to avoid all future misunderstandings, just assume that if I want your opinion, I’ll ask you for it.” He gave up trying to find his missing sock then, and pulled his boot on over his bare foot. “I’m out of here.”

“Fine. But don’t come back until you’ve apologized. I’m not your punching bag, Yev.”

He clamped down on the urge to yell at her some more and stormed out of her dorm room, slamming the door behind him. There were other students in the hall who stared at him as he passed, and he glared right back at them until they looked away.

The air outside was cool, but not cold. Yev sat down on the steps leading up to the hall of residence, breathing hard and resting his clenched fists on his knees. He’d always had a short temper, and he’d always assumed that he’d gotten it from his mom but… she never really raged. She yelled, yes, but she always seemed to be in total control. Yev… didn’t feel in control. Hardly surprising, really, given that his father - his _biological_ father - was a criminal.

He took his phone out of his pocket and looked up his father like Sarah had, until he found the picture. The picture they probably put on all the Wanted posters. Mickey Milkovich looked up at him, his hard expression giving nothing away.

Yev sighed heavily. He already felt guilty for yelling at Sarah, and he was already itching to apologize to her. But instead he just looked down at the photo, and then he thumbed his way over to his recent messages until he found Ian’s.

 _I want to meet him_ , he typed, and then just sat there for a while and looked at the five words, trying to figure out if they were true or not.


	2. Chapter 2

Yev’s dad came to town the weekend before spring break, on business. He had a big client in Manhattan, so he stopped by pretty regularly and they’d catch up over coffee and pastries at Yev’s favorite bakery-café. Normally he looked forward to their meet-ups, but on this occasion he had a cloud of guilt hanging over him.

“You alright?” his dad asked, catching Yev staring out of the window.

“Yeah,” Yev replied automatically, then wondered why he’d bothered to lie. “Actually, no. Um. Something happened.”

His dad’s eyebrows knitted together in concern. He was a couple of years older than Yev’s mom and he’d been losing his hair steadily for the last four years, so that now he was nearly completely bald on top. He wore suits to work, but he hated them, and preferred comfy sweaters and scarves and jeans. He always seemed to dress too warmly for the weather, and even though they were sitting inside he still had his jacket on.

Yev loved his dad, and not just out of obligation. Maybe it was because his mom was always the strict one when he was growing up, but he’d always thought of his dad as a friend as well as a father. Still, this wasn’t easy to say.

“I want to tell you,” Yev continued. “But… you can’t tell Mom. I mean, I’ll probably tell her myself eventually, but for now it’s got to be between just us.”

“Sure, kid,” his dad said, his face still crumpled with worry.

Yev took a deep breath, and then he just came out with it. “Someone reached out to me about my biological father. He wants to meet me, and I want to meet him. So that’s what I’m going to do, during spring break.”

He searched his father’s face for signs of hurt, but only found warm sympathy. “That’s pretty huge. How do you feel about it?”

Yev stared down into his coffee, frowning. “I don’t know. Part of me wants to call it off. I mean, he’s nobody. And I already have a dad.”

His father nodded slowly, hesitated, and then said, “You know I’m OK with it, right? I’ve always been against the whole shroud of secrecy thing your mom had going on. It’s totally natural to want to know where you came from.”

“But it’s stupid,” Yev burst out, frustrated by how at ease his dad was with the whole thing. “I already have two parents. I don’t need another one.”

“Well…” his dad said, speaking slowly. “Even if you don’t need another dad, maybe he needs a son.”

“Yeah, well he should have thought about that before he…” Yev cut himself off. Ian had made him swear to a certain degree of secrecy as a condition for being taken to his father. He looked out the window at the New Yorkers hurrying past, still troubled.

“I’ve got my fair share of regrets. I’m sure you do too, even as young as you are. Maybe this is one of his.” His dad reached over the table and patted Yev on the arm, a little awkwardly. “If you don’t go, later you might wish that you had.”

Yev nodded, and felt something tighten in his chest, so he took a long sip of coffee to try and burn it out of him.

 

* * *

 

Ian had gone back to Chicago to visit his family, and he was twenty minutes late showing up to Yev’s halls of residence. He apologized, saying that traffic had been bad, but Yev got the sense that that was an excuse, and that Ian was just the kind of person who was always showing up late. He slung his duffel bag into the compact trunk of the two-seater car, and then slid into the passenger seat and connected his phone to the stereo without asking permission. One of his favorite things about long road trips was listening to music, and he wasn’t going to leave the choice of music up to anyone else.

He half expected Ian to object, but instead he just complimented Yev on his selection. After that they didn’t talk much, though that was mostly because Ian had to concentrate in order to navigate New York’s traffic. It wasn’t until they were crossing the Passaic River that Ian spoke again.

“Do you have your driver’s license? We can probably get there faster if we drive in shifts.”

“Yeah,” Yev replied, and he thought about telling Ian that his dad had taught him how to drive. But that seemed like overkill.

After another long stretch of silence filled only by the soft strains of guitar music from the stereo, Ian spoke again.

“So did you tell your parents about this?” There was an unspoken question underneath it: _Did you keep your promise?_

“I just told my dad. I’ll figure out how to tell my mom later.”

Ian nodded, then smiled a little with one side of his mouth. “I’m glad Svetlana ended up getting remarried,” he said. “Your dad sounds like a pretty great guy.”

Yev was about to say something to that, maybe something sarcastic, when Ian’s first statement registered with his brain and his stomach lurched. “Wait, what?” he exclaimed. “Did you say remarried?”

Ian glanced over at him, looking a little confused. “Yeah. She married your dad, right?”

“Yeah, but who the hell was she married to before?”

“Mickey, of course.” Yev must have looked pretty shellshocked, because Ian looked over at him again and chuckled a little. “Right. I guess you didn’t know that.”

Yev was reeling. Learning that his biological father had stuck around for a while when he was a baby was one thing, but now it turned out his mom had been _married_ to Mickey Milkovich. That was different. She’d had a whole life, been part of a real nuclear family, before she ever met his father.

“But he’s gay!” Yev burst out, distantly surprised at how angry he sounded. “Why the hell did they get married?”

“It’s complicated,” Ian replied, and Yev saw a flicker of pain cross his face, like he’d just put weight upon an old injury. “Mickey was in the closet at the time. Svetlana knew he was gay, but she was pregnant with you and Mickey’s dad was… not the kind of guy you say no to. So he told Mickey he had to get married, and Mickey did.”

The stereo was playing a sad song, and it made Yev’s chest hurt more as he tried to process the information. When he jerked himself out of his trance, he realized that Ian was holding out his phone.

“Here. I, uh, put a bunch of old photos together in an album. Figured you might get a kick out of them. That first one, that’s you and your mom when you were really little.”

Yev took the phone gingerly and looked down at the screen. Sure enough, there was his mom - younger, slimmer, and wearing a too-short silk robe, with a blond-haired baby cradled in her arms. She wasn’t looking at the camera, but smiling down at the baby version of Yev, seemingly unaware that her photo was taken. For some reason Yev was surprised by the naked adoration on her face; he was so used to his mother keeping her true emotions hidden.

He flipped over to the next photo and his heart lurched. There he was, Mickey Milkovich. Not in an orange jumpsuit this time, but in a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He was clean-shaven, too, and instead of wearing the expression of a hardened criminal he was leaning forward with a soft, private, affectionate smile on his face, one hand resting on the edge of a swing chair in which baby Yev was sleeping.

The photo rocked Yev’s brain almost as much as the revelation that his mom had been married to Mickey. He’d had an idea in his head of who his biological father was - a thug who’d been corralled into a loveless relationship, and who had stuck around only out of obligation. But that mental picture didn’t match up with the photo that he was looking at. Except…

Yev squinted at the picture, then zoomed in on Mickey Milkovich’s hand.

He had the word “FUCK” tattooed on his fingers.

Yev latched onto that like a rock in a stormy sea and wrapped his disgust around the detail like an oyster coating an irritant with nacre to form a pearl. Right. That was the kind of guy his biological father was. The kind of guy to tattoo curse words on his knuckles. Yev flipped to the next photo.

This was someone he didn’t recognize - a skinny, pale girl with black hair and a nose piercing. She was standing next to a changing table on which baby Yev was lying, looking at the camera and holding up a used diaper with an exaggerated expression of revulsion. Ian glanced over, saw which photo Yev was looking at, and laughed.

“That’s your Aunt Mandy,” he explained. “Mickey’s sister. She’s great.”

And this was something else that Yev hadn’t thought about since he was a kid, spitefully fantasizing about his real dad coming to pick him up and rescue him from having to do chores and homework. He had an aunt, maybe more than one, and maybe uncles too, and cousins. Did he still have a grandfather and a grandmother out there that he couldn’t remember?

The next photo was a selfie, taken inside a car, with a much younger Ian in the foreground, grinning broadly and angling the camera so that Yev could see the baby version of himself sitting in a car seat in the back. The Ian in the photo was skinnier than the man sitting in the car with Yev now, and paler, and his hair was messy and sticking up, and there was something uncomfortable about his smile - something desperate and a little sickly.

“Another road trip?” Yev asked.

Ian looked over again, saw the photo, and a shadow passed over his expression - just a flicker of sadness. “Yeah,” he said, and didn’t elaborate.

If Yev had held any hope that maybe Ian had been lying about Svetlana and Mickey being married, it was erased by the next photo, which showed his mother in a wedding dress posed next to Mickey, whose tuxedo seemed at odds with the crude tattoos on his knuckles. They were both smiling in the photo, but while Svetlana’s smile seemed genuine, Mickey’s was tight and forced.

Yev stared at his mother in the photo, as if she could give him answers. Why had she kept this from him, for his entire life so far? Why had she let him believe that his biological father was just a blip on the radar when she’d been _married_ to him, lived with him, had a whole life with him? Did his dad know about any of this? 

He carried on flipping through the photos - hungry for more information. Ian and Mickey huddled together in a selfie, each with a middle finger raised. Mickey leaning on the hood of a car, smoking, his head angled slightly away. Svetlana standing in a kitchen, holding baby Yev and smiling broadly. Yev noticed that a lot of the photos seemed to have been taken in this ugly, run-down house, filled with clutter and with dents in the walls. In one photo, though, Svetlana was sitting at a table in a bar, smirking at the camera, a drink in her hand. Yev made a connection.

“Is this where they met?” he asked Ian. “My mom and dad? Dad told me he met Mom when she was working in a bar.”

Ian was busy watching the road as he made a turn, but he nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that. Some rich guy walked into the bar one day, basically swept Svetlana off her feet.”

“The way my dad tells it, it was the other way around.”

“Maybe.” Ian smiled. “When I knew her Svetlana was a force of nature.”

“She still is.”

Yev caught himself smiling at this man, at… who was Ian to him, anyway? An honorary uncle? An unofficial stepfather? Or nobody in particular - just someone who had passed through his life once, and had now returned.

“It was a bad situation they were in,” Ian elaborated. “Me and Svetlana didn’t get along at first. I mean, you can probably imagine. But once we were all living together she kind of accepted it and she was nicer to me, and I realized she wasn’t just some b… some lady who’d taken my boyfriend away. She was cool. And she _loved_ you, my god. I think she’d have shanked anyone who tried to hurt you without so much as a second thought.”

Ian obviously meant it as a good thing - the fact that Yev’s mom was the kind of woman who would “shank” someone - and not for the first time Yev wondered what kind of life she’d had before.

Then something else occurred to him. “Hey, I kinda forgot to ask before but… where exactly are we headed? Where’s Mickey now?”

“Oh.” Ian grinned. “Actually it’s kind of funny that we’re going now, during spring break.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re heading to Mexico.”


	3. Chapter 3

They each took a six hour driving shift on the first day, which took them a little way into Virginia. Yev would have been willing to drive farther, but as the sun was setting Ian pointed to a sign for a motel and said that they should stop and get a decent night’s sleep.

Yev couldn’t help but pull a face when they pulled into the motel parking lot. The neon sign was failing and advertised the place as an “O EL,” and on their way to the front office they passed a guy in a cheap suit who was leading a prostitute to his room, one hand resting on the small of her back, just above the butterfly tattoo that was exposed by her cropped shirt and low-slung miniskirt. Ian, however, sighed in relief like he’d just arrived at the Hilton and said, “Man, I’m looking forward to lying down.”

The woman behind the counter was watching sitcoms on a laptop, and when she looked up at the two of them it was with a decidedly judgmental expression.

“Room with a double is a hundred for the night,” she drawled.

Yev realized what she was implying - what she had assumed - and automatically bristled. But Ian just said, calmly, “We need a room with twins.”

“Two single rooms,” Yev corrected firmly.

Ian glanced over at him apologetically. “Uh, I can’t really afford that.”

“I can.” Yev’s dad had given him permission to use his credit card for whatever he needed on the trip. He handed it over, and Ian raised his eyebrows but didn’t protest.

There was a diner attached to the motel, so they stopped in and ordered food. At one point Yev got up to go to the bathroom, and when he came back he saw that Ian had a pill box open on the table. Ian placed a pill on his tongue and washed it down with a swig of water, grimacing a little.

“What are those for?” Yev asked, walking past Ian and sliding into the seat opposite.

Ian had jumped a little at his unannounced return, and hesitated for a moment before answering. Finally he said, “I have bipolar disorder.”

“Oh.” Yev had no idea how to react to that, but he must have looked a little spooked, because Ian glanced up at him and forced a smile.

“It’s fine. I mean, not fine, but it’s manageable. I haven’t had a really bad episode for almost three years now.”

“What’s a really bad episode?” Yev asked, curious. “Like, any examples?”

Ian was silent for a moment, staring down at his cheap steak dinner. “One time I kidnapped a baby and drove it halfway across the country before the cops caught me.”

“Jesus Christ!” Yev exclaimed. “Whose baby was it?”

Ian looked up at him then, with a bashful expression. “It was Mickey and Svetlana’s baby.”

Yev quickly connected the dots. The photo of Ian, wild-haired and wide-eyed, with Yev in the back seat of the car. “That was the road trip.”

“Yeah.” Ian dipped one of his fries in ketchup and ate it with a thoughtful, far-away expression. “I didn’t mean anything bad by it. At the time it felt fine, like I was doing a nice thing for you. I was going to take you to Disney World. But… I kind of just grabbed you and ran. No cash, no diapers, no baby food. Your mom was furious. She wouldn’t let me move back in afterwards. And not long after that Mickey went to jail. It all kind of fell apart.”

The lines in his face were deepened by remembered regret and sadness. Yev had no idea what the right thing to say was, so he said:

“I did go to Disney World.”

Ian looked up.

“When I was six. And again when I was eight.”

“Yeah?” Ian smiled a little. “You have fun?”

“I like Six Flags better.”

They didn’t talk much after that.

 

* * *

 

Later, lying in bed with his laptop open, Yev began to search for everything that he could find on the Milkovich family. It turned out that Mickey wasn’t the only one who’d ended up in prison - not by a long shot. There was a Terry Milkovich, who had been in and out of the system until one day he stabbed a woman in the throat with a broken beer bottle. She’d died, and Terry Milkovich had been given a life sentence. There was a Colin Milkovich, currently incarcerated for grand theft auto. And Mickey Milkovich, of course - there had been a lot of excitement over his escape and the subsequent manhunt. They’d traced him as far as Texas, but then lost track of him.

Yev found Mandy Milkovich on social media, married to one Lip Gallagher, whom it turned out was Ian’s brother. They had two kids - a girl and a boy, aged six and eight, respectively. Yev’s cousins.

His search was interrupted by the soft sound of someone talking outside. He frowned, then pushed his laptop to one side and padded over to the window in his socks. He’d left it slightly ajar, so it was easy to eavesdrop through the cheap net curtains.

Ian was leaning on the railing that ran along the side of the walkway, outside their second-floor rooms. The gentle spring breeze was making his shirt billow like a sail. His head was turned away, and his phone was pressed to his ear.

“Probably another couple of days,” he said. “If traffic’s not too bad.”

Yev’s chest tightened as he realized that Ian must be talking to Mickey. He strained to hear the voice on the other end of the phone, but what he could make out was very faint and possibly just the product of his imagination.

“They’re good. I mean, Frank’s still Frank, y’know? But everyone else is good. Liam’s doing this apprenticeship so he can become an electrician. Franny’s going to graduate high school. She looks _just_ like Deb when she was that age, it’s crazy.”

Yev didn’t know who any of these people were, but he still listened intently. He was waiting to hear what Ian would say about him - to get an idea of what Mickey might ask about him. But all that followed were a handful of “mm-hms” and “yeahs,” and then Ian said in a soft, affectionate voice, “I miss you too. I’ll see you in a couple of days, OK?”

He hung up after that, and went back into his room. Yev sat down heavily on his bed, replaying the one-sided conversation that he had just heard in his head, trying to figure out the other half. And as he did so, a nasty suspicion crept up on him.

It was late when he knocked on Ian’s door, but he didn’t care. After a while the redhead opened up, blinking in the slow manner of someone who had just been roused from near-sleep. Good. That meant his defenses would be down.

“Does he know?” Yev demanded, his jaw clenched so hard he could barely get the words out.

Ian’s posture stiffened. “Does who know what?” he asked, in a poor mimicry of confusion.

“Mickey. Does he know you’re bringing me to Mexico?”

There was a moment where it looked like Ian was going to lie, but then his shoulders sagged. Yev clenched his fists, then turned away from the door in disgust.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed loudly, not caring if he woke their neighbors. He leaned on the railing and tightened his fingers around it until his knuckles turned white.

“I’m sorry,” Ian said quietly, from somewhere behind him. “I know Mickey. If he knew I was planning to find you, to tell you who your real father was, he would have tried to stop me. He thinks you’re better off without him.”

“And did it ever fucking occur to you that maybe he’s right?” Yev bit out angrily, still not turning around.

“Hey, you didn’t have to come and meet me at that diner,” Ian argued, his voice stronger now. “You could have ignored my message. And you decided to come back with me all by yourself. You can’t pin that on me.”

“I decided that when I thought you’d kept him in the fucking loop!” Yev yelled, finally turning back around and bearing down on Ian with as intimidating a stance as he could manage, despite his significant height disadvantage.

“What difference does it make?” Ian snapped back, raising his voice as well.

From inside a neighboring room, someone yelled, “ _Hey, shut the fuck up!_ ”

“Fuck you!” Yev screamed back.

“Hey, hey, hey…” Ian grabbed him by the arm, dragged him into the room. “Jesus, don’t get us kicked out of here.”

Yev paced back and forth, his hands in his hair. “He doesn’t even want to see me, does he? I thought you came here to bring a message from him, but he doesn’t give a fuck about me. He was fine without me.”

“Yev, please,” Ian begged, his voice breaking a little. “He does. I know he does.”

“How?” Yev demanded. “Did he say so? Does he even talk about me, ever?”

“It’s the way he _doesn’t_ talk about you, not ever,” Ian explained. “Even when I bring you up, he just goes quiet. And we…”

He looked away - at the net curtains in front of the window, lit up red by the neon sign.

“We can’t have kids,” Ian continued quietly. “We just can’t. Mickey’s still a fugitive, and if we tried to adopt there’d be paperwork, and background checks. Even if we could find a surrogate, it wouldn’t be fair. To bring a kid into a family where he can’t tell anyone who his dad is. But I see Mickey, when he doesn’t know I’m looking. I see him looking at dads with their kids and he gets this look on his face like…”

The sentence trailed away. Ian looked profoundly sad, his shoulders sagging like there was a great weight upon them.

“I’m not a kid any more,” Yev said at last, breaking the silence. “I’m nineteen. I’m in college. In a few years I’ll be getting a job and moving into my own place. If he wanted to raise a son, he shouldn’t have broken the law and wound up in jail. I can’t give him those years back. No one can.”

For the first time in days, Yev felt like he was thinking clearly. This was madness - what was he even doing? Why was he in this sleazy motel in Virginia, with a guy who was basically a total stranger, heading down to Mexico to visit his fugitive biological father? That had to be illegal, right? If people found out he could get kicked out of college. He could face criminal charges for knowingly concealing the whereabouts of an escaped prisoner.

“This is stupid,” he breathed. Then louder, he said, “I’m not doing this. I was crazy to come this far. I’m going to bed, and tomorrow I’m heading back to New York.”

“No, please don’t, _please_ , Yev.” Ian sounded distraught.

“You lied to me,” Yev hissed. “He doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. And you - you’re sick in the head. This is probably another one of your fucking bipolar episodes. Only this time I’m not a baby. You can’t just kidnap me and take me wherever the hell you want.”

He looked up at Ian, and saw him looking back with an expression of deep, deep hurt. Ian was silent for a few long seconds. Then he said, in a bitter voice, “I liked you better when you couldn’t talk.”

Yev stormed back out of Ian’s room, slamming the door behind him, and got back into his own bed. It took him a long time to fall asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Yev’s first feeling upon waking and remembering the previous night’s argument was one of relief. Yes, coming here had been stupid, and he’d been on the path to a terrible decision, but he’d recognized it as a terrible decision in time and pulled back. That was the difference between him and his biological father - the ability to realize when you’re about to screw up, and to change course.

He knocked on Ian’s door, but there was no response. When Yev turned away from the door, he heard the soft sound of splashing in the chilly morning air, and leaned over the railing, where he saw Ian furiously swimming laps in the motel’s outdoor pool. He moved fast, his motions clean and precise, and Yev wondered if swimming was a regular part of his life. Maybe he went swimming with Mickey. Whatever. It didn’t matter.

Yev headed to the diner, making a point to walk past the pool so that Ian would see him and know where to find him. Yev was itching to get away from here, but he needed Ian to drive him to the airport.

Ian arrived in the diner just when Yev was adding cinnamon sugar and a big helping of syrup to his french toast, and something about the sight apparently amused him because the corners of his mouth pulled into a faint smile. He ordered a big breakfast and sat nursing his coffee while he waited for it to arrive.

“Are you sure you won’t come with me?” he said at last, breaking the silence. He sounded deeply resigned. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“Go back in time and be honest with me from the start?” Yev suggested coolly.

Ian winced. “OK, that’s fair. Look, I know I fucked up, but please don’t take it out on Mickey.”

“If Mickey really wants to meet me then he can contact me himself. Go home, give him my number and see what he does. I don’t see why I should have to travel thousands of miles to see him when he’s the one who left.”

“He can’t cross the border, Yev, it _has_ to be you.”

“Are we still talking about this?” Yev asked, with a tone of mock-surprise, just as the waitress arrived with Ian’s breakfast. She topped up Yev’s coffee as well, and he smiled and thanked her.

Ian poked at his eggs with his fork, but didn’t start eating them. He looked so utterly miserable that Yev felt a twinge of guilt. Yeah, he’d been right to call the whole thing off, but maybe he hadn’t needed to be so harsh about it. Sometimes, when he was right and he knew someone else was wrong, he got kind of carried away with dressing them down. It was a trait that made him very unpopular in his classes.

But Yev wasn’t great at apologies, and fortunately his phone started ringing before he could say anything else to Ian. “I’ve gotta take this,” he said, shoving a piece of french toast into his mouth and then stepping out of the diner.

 

* * *

 

Ian found him twenty minutes later, sitting on the edge of the pool, staring into its depths with wide, terrified eyes.

“We should probably head out,” Ian said heavily. “I’ve got a lot of driving to do today.”

Yev didn’t reply.

“Did you hear me?”

Yev tried to unstick his throat to speak. He could feel his shoulders heaving and, distantly, he realized that he was having a panic attack. He wanted to ask Ian to help him, but it was like there was a hand gripping his lungs rhythmically, blocking him from speaking, only allowing for the wheeze of breath in and out of his body.

“Yev?” Ian sounded urgent and worried now. He squatted down and peered into Yev’s face, his own expression dropping. “Yev, talk to me. Are you OK?”

He clapped a hand onto Yev’s shoulder, and for some reason that jolted him out of his panicked freeze. Licking his dry lips he said in a stilted monotone, “My girlfriend is pregnant.”

“Oh.” Ian furrowed his brow, then sat down next to him, angled to face him. “I’m guessing by your reaction that this isn’t good news?”

“I’m nineteen!” Yev exclaimed in a slightly hysterical voice. “Sarah’s eighteen! We’re both in college! We live in fucking dorms! No, it’s not fucking good news!”

“Alright, alright, calm down…”

“My mom’s gonna kill me, oh god, she’s gonna kill me when she finds out. How the fuck am I supposed to tell her?”

“You can figure that out later, Yev. You’re going to have plenty of time to figure that out. But for now I need you to take a deep breath for me. Breathe in for four seconds, can you do that?”

Yev sucked in a breath, filling his lungs in about half a second and then holding in the breath, his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

“No, not like that. Breathe _slowly._ Come on - out for four seconds, in for four seconds. I’ll breathe with you, out for four…” He pursed his lips, slowly blowing out the air from his lungs, and Yev tried to copy him. Then Ian breathed in again, exaggerating the motion of his chest as his lungs filled, and Yev breathed with him. The spots that had been dancing in front of his eyes slowly started to fade, and faintly he became aware that Ian was rubbing his back soothingly.

Once Yev had managed to forcibly slow his breathing, Ian said, “Do you want to go back to your room?”

He shook his head. “No, no, I need some fresh fucking air right now.”

“OK. Take as much time as you need.”

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, Yev focusing on breathing slowly - _out for four, in for four_ \- as his heart rate gradually slowed down and the raw panic started to ease. Ian kept one hand on his shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly every now and then.

“Sarah, that’s your girlfriend’s name?” Ian asked, once Yev was in a better state.

He nodded. “Yeah, Sarah.”

“You guys meet in class?”

“Yeah. Politics.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s smart, man,” Yev replied, picturing the cheeky grin that Sarah always wore when she got one over on him. “She’s so fucking smart. Pisses me off, sometimes, because we get into these debates and she’s always got an answer for everything.”

“You been going out with her long?”

“About four months.” That brought him back to the reality that his girlfriend of just a few months was pregnant, and Yev dropped his head into his hands. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot. I’m an _idiot_.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Ian said gently.

“No, I am. It’s not like the condom broke, we just didn’t fucking use one. We’d been out at this party and we were both pretty wasted when we got back to her place and we just… didn’t bother. And in the morning we were so fucking hungover, and she said it was probably fine, like she didn’t even think it was the right time of the month for her to get pregnant. But she didn’t sound super certain and I should have insisted, I should have _gone out_ and gotten the pill for her and brought it back, but instead I just crawled into the bathroom and puked and then passed out again. And she went out the next day and got the pill but it doesn’t always work if you wait that long.” Yev cringed at his own idiocy, then slammed the heel of his hand into his head three times, punctuating each blow with a word: “So. Fucking. _Stupid_.”

“Hey, hey, don’t do that,” Ian said, grabbing his wrist firmly and lowering it. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“It’s kind of late for that. My life is fucking over. It’s _over_. I can’t get my degree and raise a kid at the same time. I’m gonna have to drop out, get a job. I’ll probably have to ask my parents for money. My mom’s going to kill me.”

Ian chuckled softly. “I mean, your mom’s not really in a position to criticize you for becoming a teenage parent.”

“That’s _why_ she’s going to be so mad. You know how many uncomfortable sex ed talks she gave me? She put a fucking bowl of condoms in the bathroom and told me to take them whenever I needed them. She’d lecture me about venereal disease over dinner, for fuck’s sake. And after all that, I knock my girlfriend up when I haven’t even been at college for a _year._ ”

“Do you know what your girlfriend wants to do?”

Yev racked his brains, trying to recall Sarah’s exact tone during the phone call. “I think if she’d decided to get an abortion, she wouldn’t have called me. She probably just would have gone out and got it and asked for me to pay my half afterwards. That’s the kind of person she is - she likes to solve her own problems. If she called me it means she’s at least thinking about keeping the baby, which means my life is fucking over.”

Ian was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Do you want to know what kind of things I’d done by the time I was your age?”

Yev shrugged. Ian took that as an affirmative, and continued. He took his hand off Yev’s shoulder and started counting off incidents on his fingers.

“OK, let’s see. I had an affair with a married man twice my age. I had an affair with a married man _three times_ my age. I dropped out of high school and I joined the army, while I was underage, using my brother’s name and ID. During basic training I tried to steal a helicopter, and ending up tipping it over and busting up the rotor.

“Uh, what next? Oh yeah, I lived in a crack den and worked as a go-go boy in a gay club - again, while I was still underage. I did a _ton_ of drugs, sometimes in exchange for sex. I had sex for money. I did a porno, with a stranger, and I didn’t use protection. I stole a bunch of suitcases from the Lost and Found at an airport - like, _loads_ of suitcases. I’m still amazed I didn’t get caught. I kidnapped a baby - you know about that part - and I spent a few days in a mental hospital. Then the military police caught up to me and I got arrested, but I got off because they realized how fucking crazy I was.”

Yev sat there, temporarily stunned into silence by the avalanche of information.

“I did all of that. And there was a point, some time after that, when I got a job as a janitor at the college my brother went to. And just like you, I thought, ‘Well, this is the end of the road for me. My life is over. This is where I land.’”

He was silent for a while, just looking into the pool. Eventually, he continued:

“But I didn’t. I got out of that job. I trained as an EMT, and I got a real job that paid good money - a job where I could help people. And then I helped my fugitive boyfriend get to the Mexican border, and I gave him all of my savings so he could get set up. And then I got my high school diploma, and I became a firefighter. And now I’m thirty-six years old, and I have a good job, and I live with the man I love, and I’m talking to his kid who thinks his life is over because he made one stupid mistake.” Ian tentatively put his arm around Yev’s shoulder and pulled him in for a steadying sideways hug. “Your life is not over. Trust me. You got this.”

It was like Yev had been carrying a great weight that tore at his ligaments and made his joints groan, and Ian had come along and lifted it - not completely, but enough that Yev could breathe. And when he could speak again, the first thing he said was:

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“No, I do. I’ve been a fucking asshole to you since the day we met. A fucking stuck-up, judgmental asshole. I don’t know why I’m like this. I don’t _want_ to be an asshole. It just kind of happens.”

“Maybe it’s genetic,” Ian said, and Yev could hear the smile in his voice.

They went back to the diner afterwards, and Yev ordered a herbal tea, because Ian said that more caffeine probably wasn’t a good idea. He watched the water slowly darken as the tea brewed, and after a while Ian asked him: “What did you say to Sarah, when she told you?”

Yev sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t even remember. I think I just said ‘OK’ or something.”

Ian nodded slowly. Then he said, “Do you want to know how I know you’re going to be alright?”

Yev looked up from his tea. Ian continued.

“When we were out by the pool, you weren’t talking about how you were going to convince your girlfriend to get an abortion, or how you could get out of raising the baby. You were talking about dropping out of college and getting a job so you could support your kid. You were talking about begging your parents for money to help with the baby, even though you knew your mom would be mad.”

Yev shrugged. “I’m not just going to fucking… abandon Sarah. This is as much my fault as it is hers.”

“OK. So I think you should call her back, and tell her that. Tell her that no matter what decision she makes, you’re going to be behind her one-hundred percent. Because if you’re freaking out right now, imagine how she must feel.”

Yev considered that, and immediately felt guilty. “Fuck. I should have stayed on the line with her. _God_ , I’m such a…”

“Forget it, you were panicking. She’ll understand. Call her back.”

Yev nodded. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stood up, intending to take the conversation back outside. But before he left he paused by the table and said, “Ian? Thank you.”

Ian smiled at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little with the movement. “Good luck.”

Yev left, and made the call.


	5. Chapter 5

Ian checked both of them out of their rooms while Yev spoke to Sarah on the phone, and was waiting in the parking lot for him when he was done, leaning on the hood of the car. He looked up as Yev approached, and tilted his head in acknowledgment.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

Yev took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Good, I think. She says she hasn’t decided what she wants to do yet. When I get back we’re going to sit down and have a real talk, and figure out how we both feel.”

“And how do you feel?”

“Fucking terrified,” Yev admitted, laughing at himself a little. He felt better than he had, but at the back of his mind were images of babies and puke and dirty diapers and his mom’s face as he told her that he was going to become a teenage parent.

Ian smiled. “Well, for what it’s worth, and I know this isn’t going to mean much coming from me, but I just need to say…” He took a deep breath of his own, as though he was bracing himself for Yev to get angry. “...I’m real proud of you, Yev.” His voice shook a little as he said it, and he looked so sincere, like he was holding back from saying other things as well.

“Thanks,” Yev said, feeling a little awkward.

“And listen, if you ever change your mind about coming down to Mexico and meeting Mickey, just say the word. You’ve got my number. Any time, you’re welcome.”

“Actually, about that…” Yev scuffed his shoe on the asphalt nervously. “I asked Sarah if I could have a week to think about stuff, and she said she needed time too. And I think… I think I need to meet him. Mickey. I mean, if anyone knows what I’m going through right now, it’s him.”

Ian looked stunned, like he didn’t quite dare to believe it. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Look, I don’t know exactly how things went down, but I’ve figured out that I was a mistake. Mickey and my mom got saddled with me when they were both teenagers as well. So I want to ask him what I’m in for, and what he’d do differently if he had a second chance. Aside from, like, not going to prison.”

“Yev…” Ian seemed to be having a hard time holding it together. “You were an accident, yeah. But you weren’t a mistake. Don’t ever think that.”

Yev didn’t really know what the difference was, but he didn’t want to quibble over it. He plastered a false, cheery smile on his face and said, “We should head out, right? If we want to cover a lot of distance today.”

Ian nodded, then tossed the keys over with a gentle grin. “You’re driving,” he said.

 

* * *

 

Things were different on the second leg of the journey, with Yev no longer acting like a standoffish asshole and Ian no longer quite so nervous about scaring him off. The landscape changed around them as they drove south, working their way through Yev’s playlists, with Ian occasionally going through his phone and picking out a song.

As they drove, Yev asked questions, and quickly picked up on the fact that Ian was reluctant to answer any questions about how Mickey had met Yev’s mom. He was, however, happy to talk about his own life with Mickey, and Yev learned that they had gotten together when Ian was just fifteen, and spent a few years separated after Mickey went down to Mexico. Then one day, out of the blue, Ian had received a letter with a return address on it, and he and Mickey had started writing to each other and calling one another. Before long the letters and phone calls weren’t enough, and so Ian picked up his life and moved south of the border.

“I went through some pretty bad times,” he confessed. “Just… one depressive episode after another, and switching up my meds wasn’t helping. That’s when I figured out that I couldn’t do long distance with Mickey. It was all or nothing, so I chose ‘all.’”

They lived near a beach. Mickey worked off the books at a nearby bar, and Ian was a firefighter. On most weekends they’d take a boat out and drink beer on the ocean, and watch dolphins chasing the fishing boats.

“Do you like it?” Yev asked curiously. “Living like that?”

Ian wasn’t offended. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, “I miss my family. That’s probably the hardest part. I was real close to my brother Lip, and after I moved I missed really seeing my little brother Liam grow up. Like, every time I went back he’d be a few inches taller, and then one day I went back and he was a man. And that hit me, really hard.” He swallowed hard, and clenched his jaw. “And then there was you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I moved to Mexico, and when I came back for my first visit home, you were gone. You and your mom. And I thought about all the time I could have spent with you, like when your mom was trying to find a babysitter but I was too busy. And I felt awful, really awful about it.”

“But why?” Yev was puzzled. “I mean, no offense, but it’s not like we’re related.”

Ian stared out of his window morosely. “I know. But I don’t think anyone could have lived in the same house as you when you were a baby and not fallen in love with you. Even then, I could see how much you looked like Mickey, and I loved you like you were my own kid. Because you were _his_.”

The confession, and the ease with which Ian made it, left Yev reeling a little. _Love_ was a big word, and Ian threw it around so carelessly. But now that he’d explained it, his grand odyssey to come and meet Yev and his desperation to bring him back to Mexico made more sense.

“I didn’t know,” Yev said at last. “You told me you were around when I was a baby, but I thought you were just, I dunno, kind of adjacent.”

Ian shook his head. “It was more like we were all in it together, all three of us. Me and your mom and Mickey. For a while I thought we could make it long-term, like this weird little crab of a family.”

“A crab?” Yev echoed with a laugh.

“Yeah,” Ian chuckled. “You know, super weird-looking from the outside, but built to survive.”

It was a good description, Yev supposed. He didn’t point out that their little family unit hadn’t survived for long, like the Yev of just a few days ago might have. Instead he just said, “This is kind of a lot to take in. I thought I just had one dad. Now it’s like I have three.”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “Consider yourself lucky. I only have one dad, and he’s a fucking asshole. Only thing he ever gave me was a bloody nose.” He said it casually, like it was no big deal. It made Yev a little sad.

They made good distance that day, even after their slow start. They snacked on gas station food for most of the way, but Yev stopped in Birmingham, Alabama, outside a nice-looking steakhouse and insisted on buying them both dinner. Ian shifted uncomfortably and muttered something about how he could pony up some cash for his half, but Yev just shook his head.

“Honestly, it’ll make my dad happy if he checks his account and sees that we ate a damn good meal on the way.”

Ian still looked a little reluctant, but they were both very hungry and in the end the tempting promise of a high-quality steak won him over. They got out of the car and walked up to the steakhouse - Ian tugging self-consciously at the collar of his leather jacket.

“Aren’t I kind of underdressed?” he asked.

“You’re hungry, and we’ve got a credit card. That’s all they care about.”

Sure enough, they were both greeted with smiles and seated at a good table. Ian ordered a modest NY strip, and his eyes widened a fraction when Yev casually ordered a dry-aged wagyu ribeye with a price in the triple-digits.

To distract him from the intimidating surroundings, Yev asked Ian about his family. It was apparently a subject that could fill a lot of time. He had three brothers and two sisters (“not counting my half-sister Sammi, and I _don’t_ count her”), and a bunch of nieces and nephews. His mom had passed away when Ian was Yev’s age, and his dad was severely alcoholic and had never been much of a parent (“he’s not even my biological father, but we’re all Frank’s kids either way”). When Ian’s dad got old and incontinent, he and his four eldest siblings scraped together enough money from their monthly paychecks to pay for a room and care in a cheap nursing home.

“We should have just left him to die under a fucking bridge,” Ian said bitterly. “But then we’d be just as bad as him. And at least this way he isn’t trying to break into Fiona’s house every other day, looking for a bed.”

The steaks arrived, and Yev watched Ian out of the corner of his eye and smiled secretly when he took the first bite of perfectly cooked meat - seared on the outside, pink on the inside - and muttered “ _Holy fuck_ ” under his breath. Yev gave Ian a cut of the wagyu ribeye as well, just so he could see his reaction, and he laughed when Ian appeared to have a religious experience right in front of his eyes. Fortunately, he seemed to have gotten over his embarrassment about being in such a fancy place, and Yev paying for the meal.

They drove for a couple more hours afterwards, but digestion soon started to slow them down, and as Yev felt his eyelids start to droop he looked over to the passenger seat and saw that Ian was passed out. Yev quietly requested directions to the nearest hotel from his phone, and a few minutes later he was pulling up outside a place decidedly nicer than last night’s accommodation.

Ian stirred and opened his eyes blearily, blinking out of the windows at the entrance to the hotel, suddenly alarmed. “Where are we?”

“Figured we’d stop for the night.”

“Yev, this place has a _valet_ ,” Ian hissed, sounding scandalized.

Yev just laughed at him and climbed out of the car, reaching into the back to grab his duffel bag and Ian’s backpack, skimming the latter over the hood of the car as he walked around. Ian caught it, still looking confused and uncertain, and Yev handed the keys to the valet (he always hated it when guys tossed their keys at valets - such a douchey move, and his dad never did it) and headed in before Ian could protest any more at the curb.

Ian caught up with him while he was waiting for the receptionist to become available. “You swipe your dad’s credit card any more, it’ll be sharp enough to use as a shiv,” he said, sounding both exasperated and amused.

“Much as I appreciated the chance to win a free bed bug infestation in the last place, I need to sleep on a decent mattress after being cramped up in your raggedy-ass car all day.”

“Hey, man, don’t badmouth the car. She’s seen me through some bad times.”

Yev asked for two single rooms again (he was a big fan of personal space), and while they waited for the hotel to get them set up and sort out their keys they sat in the lobby, Ian looking around furtively at their surroundings.

“What does your dad do?” he asked, after a while.

“He’s an actuary.” Yev glanced over and registered Ian’s blank expression. “Uh, basically an accountant who specializes in financial risk assessment.”

“He must make a lot of money.”

“Enough. He’s not a millionaire or anything.”

Ian nodded. Then he asked, “What about Svetlana? She still working?”

“Yeah, she runs this little boutique salon. Does a lot of hair and make-up for weddings and for girls who are coming out.” He glanced over and saw Ian looking confused, and laughed. “I mean, like, for debutante balls. Not _coming out._ ”

“Oh, right. I was gonna say, no one did my hair and make-up when I came out.”

Yev laughed properly for the first time in days, and apparently it was contagious because Ian started laughing too. They were both still chuckling when the receptionist came over and handed them their keys, and they struggled to regain their composure.

They sobered up a little in the elevator. “So, we’ll probably get there tomorrow night, if we set off early,” Ian said quietly.

Yev nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You ready?”

“Nope,” Yev admitted. “But I’ve got a few hundred more miles to get ready, right?”

“Right.”

The doors opened and they walked to their rooms. The hallway carpet was richly patterned, but worn smooth by years of people walking back and forth, and there were modern paintings and large vases full of twisty sticks dotted in alcoves here and there.

“Man, I’m going to pass right the fuck out,” Ian groaned as he leaned against his door, swiping his key card.

“Me too,” said Yev, though realistically he was probably going to watch some porn first. One of the many benefits of separate rooms. He offered Ian a mock salute and said, “See you tomorrow.”

“Adios.”


	6. Chapter 6

They crossed the border at sunset, and Yev had to be woken up by Ian from where he had passed out, his chair pushed back as far as it would go, and his feet up on the dashboard. Fortunately, Ian had told him, the fact that he’d been about as relaxed as it was possible for a person to be meant that the border control officers didn’t ask many questions - just checked their IDs and waved them through.

“How much farther?” Yev asked, once they were clear.

“Still another six hours,” Ian replied apologetically. “We didn’t want to settle too close to the border.”

Yev yawned and nodded sleepily. “You want me to take over driving?”

Ian chuckled. “I want to get there alive, so no. Just go back to sleep.”

This was Yev’s first visit to Mexico, but there wasn’t much to look at out of the windows now that it was dark, and so he promptly followed Ian’s instructions. The next time he woke up, they were stopped at a gas station and Ian was handing him some kind of soda pop called Sol.

“Try that,” he instructed. “I love it, but you can’t get it across the border.”

It was pretty good. The sugar rush kept Yev awake for an hour or so, and he listened to Ian talk about some of the crazy fires he’d had to put out - including one time when a fire got started inside a bank, and they’d had to try and stop people from running towards it as charred bills began floating out of the building on billows of heated air.

“Does Mickey worry about you?” Yev asked. “I mean, it sounds like a dangerous job.”

“Nah. Mickey knows I can handle myself. Same reason I don’t worry about him working as a bouncer. I’ve seen him kick enough asses that I know there’s no drunk tourist he can’t handle. Hell, I’ve had my ass kicked by him personally.”

“He beat you up?” Yev asked, frowning.

“Yeah, we got into it a couple times back in the South Side,” Ian admitted. “And a few times since then. Sometimes it’s the best thing for it, you know? When one of us is being an asshole or we’ve both been snipping at each other for a few days, it helps to just spend five minutes throwing punches and trying to kick each other in the stones. Relieves the tension, you know?” He glanced over at Yev, then hastily tried to backtrack. “Not that I’m saying that’s a healthy way to deal with relationship issues.”

“So you’re saying I _shouldn’t_ hit my girlfriend? Noted. Thanks for the tip.”

“Alright, smartass,” Ian shot back, grinning.

Yev fell asleep again soon after that, and he slept for a long time. When he woke up he found himself draped in a blanket, with orange streetlights passing overhead.

“Hey,” Ian said hoarsely, noticing that Yev’s eyes were open. “We’re nearly there.”

“What time issit?” Yev mumbled.

“Nearly two. Mick texted me a while back, said he was going to bed.”

“He still doesn’t know, does he?”

Ian shook his head. “I usually wake up first, so I’ll explain everything to him in the morning. I’ll make up the couch for you. Sorry, we’ve only got the one bed.”

Yev shrugged. “More comfortable than sleeping in a car seat.”

They lived in a narrow little house - so narrow that it looked like a regular house that had been cut in half. As Ian pulled up outside, he noticed a scruffy-looking tabby cat sitting on the steps, its head on its paws. It became alert when Ian climbed out of the car, and then stood up and made a horrible throaty yowling noise as it trotted down the steps towards them.

“Shhh, dumb cat,” Ian muttered, picking it up with practiced ease and holding it against his shoulder one-handed while he fumbled with his keys. The cat immediately buried its claws in Ian’s back and glared at Yev suspiciously.

“Cute,” he commented drily.

“Little bastard just moved in with us one day,” Ian explained. Later, Yev would learn that the cat didn’t actually have a name, and was simply called ‘little bastard’ or ‘dumb cat’ or ‘mother _fucker_ ’ depending on what kind of mood Ian and Mickey were in, and how much of an asshole the cat was being.

When they got inside, Ian opened up a can of tuna and scratched the cat behind the ears affectionately as it started to chow down. Yev walked around slowly, taking in the house where his biological father had ended up. It was small, and there was too much furniture crammed in, and there were a few dents and scrapes on the walls, but it smelled OK and seemed pretty clean.

Ian grabbed a pillow and a spare comforter from the closet and set them down on the couch. His face was drawn, and he looked pretty exhausted, but he seemed reluctant to go upstairs just yet.

“Um, bathroom’s through the kitchen. Don't drink the tap water. I think there’s some soda and beer in the fridge if you want some. Don’t know if we have any food but…”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna pass out as soon as I lie down,” Yev replied with a wry grin.

“Right.” Ian scratched a hand through his orange-red hair and looked around, as if trying to remember anything he’d forgotten. “Um. Look, don’t be offended if it takes Mickey a while to warm up to you. I honestly don’t know how he’s going to react. He’s probably going to be super pissed at me for bringing you here, but don’t take it personally.”

“Relax, I don’t get offended easily.”

Ian did go upstairs then, with heavy footsteps, and Yev got settled in on the couch. It definitely sagged, but not in a way that felt uncomfortable. It was more like the couch was trying to give him a hug. He was woken up from a doze about five minutes later when the cat jumped up onto his lap, purring, apparently having decided that his presence was acceptable. Yev rubbed its chin until it tried to bite him irritably, and that was the last thing he remembered.

 

* * *

 

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”

Yev startled awake at the sound of yelling and tried to struggle free of the couch, though he’d sunken pretty deep into overnight. He thrashed his legs and finally managed to roll onto the floor, his back screaming in protest after a night spent sleeping in an awkward position. When he finally managed to reorient himself, he found himself staring at a scarred and battered baseball bat, and followed it up  - past the tattooed fingers that were yelling “FUCK” in faded black letters - to find its owner: an extremely angry-looking man in a pair of tattered jeans and a yellowing tank top.

“You got five seconds to tell me what the fuck you’re doing on my couch, pretty boy, or I’m gonna beat your ass ‘til your face is fucking spreadable.”

Yev opened his mouth, but his brain was still in a sleep-stupor and he had no idea where to start when it came to explaining who he was and why he was sleeping on the couch. Fortunately, the yelling had woken up Ian, and he came thudding down the stairs hollering, “Oh fuck, Mickey, don’t hit him, _don’t hit him_!”

“I thought you said you usually woke up first,” Yev finally managed, propping himself up on his elbows, but not daring to try and stand up just yet.

“I had a late night,” Ian replied apologetically. “Mickey, _don’t hit him._ ”

Mickey’s stance had relaxed a little, now that it was clear that Ian knew about the stranger on the couch, but he still looked confused and very angry. “You want to explain to me why there’s some random fucking twink passed out on the couch?”

Ian buried his face in his hands despairingly. “Oh god, Mick, he’s not a fucking twink, don’t call him a twink, that’s your _son_. It’s Yevgeny.”

A stunned silence followed the declaration, in which Mickey stared first at Ian, and then back down at Yev, who was trying to figure out whether or not it was safe to stand up yet. Then Mickey loudly exclaimed, “Fuck!” and stormed out of the house.

Yev looked over at Ian, who was sitting on the stairs with his head resting on one hand, looking defeated. “Should I go after him?” Yev asked uncertainly.

“Well, he’s not mad at _you_ ,” Ian sighed.

Yev hastily pulled on his jeans and sneakers, and then burst out of the front door, his heart pounding. This was going nothing like he had planned. He had planned to meet his father when they were both fully awake, and Yev was properly dressed and had brushed his teeth, and he’d kind of had an introduction rehearsed in his head: “ _I’m Yev. I’m your son_.” But now the cat was out of the bag and Mickey was walking away fast, crossing the street without bothering to check for cars.

“Mickey!” Yev yelled after him, running across the road himself, vaguely waving a hand in apology to some old lady who was forced to slam her car to a halt. She yelled at him out of the window in Spanish and shook her fist as she drove off, but Mickey ignored him and just kept walking, turning onto a grassy path that ran between two houses. “Mickey!” Yev yelled again, as he checked to make sure he’d zipped his fly before running out of the house (he hadn’t).

Mickey glanced back, then turned back around quickly. Yev thought he heard the soft sound of swearing on the morning air. Mickey wasn’t slowing down, and Yev’s heart was racing and he was desperate to try and get any reaction, and so he didn’t really think before he called out:

“Dad!”

And that - finally - prompted Mickey to slow to a standstill and let Yev catch up. He turned around slowly, finally letting Yev get a good look at him. He was older than the kid in the photos Ian had brought - his facial features a little heavier, the lines a little deeper - but he hadn’t run to fat, and he still had all his hair (something that Yev was distantly relieved about, since hair loss was genetic). His tank top showed off the compact muscles of his shoulders and arms, as well as a colorful dragon tattoo that was wrapped around his left bicep.

Mickey looked up reluctantly into Yev’s face as he caught up, and he looked… conflicted. Still angry. Kind of scared. Maybe even a little ashamed.

“Please,” Yev begged softly. “I didn’t come here to yell at you. I’m not… mad at you, or anything. I just want to talk. Can we talk?”

Mickey’s gaze flickered over Yev’s face, obviously registering the undeniable family resemblance. He winced a little, like he’d just had a thought that had hurt him. He muttered, “Fuck.” Then he asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m nineteen,” Yev replied, speaking gently, like Mickey was a horse he didn’t want to spook. “I turned nineteen a few months ago. I’m in college,” he added hastily, though he didn’t really know why he said it. Maybe he wanted Mickey to know that he’d turned out OK, despite him leaving.

There was a moment of silence where they just looked at each other. Yev supposed that, aside from their hair and their respective ages, they probably looked like some kind of mirror image. They were the exact same height.

It was Mickey who spoke, at last. He pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket, stuck one between his lips, and lit it with shaking fingers. Blowing out smoke that billowed away on the morning air, he asked, “You like huevos rancheros?”

Yev nodded, relieved.

“Come on. I know a good place.”


	7. Chapter 7

Mickey Milkovich looked like the kind of guy that Yev would usually cross the street to avoid. His default expression was hard-edged and confrontational, and now that he was sitting down instead of running away Yev could see that his finger tattoos spelled out FUCK U-UP. His hair was greasy and slicked back, and he was still sporting morning stubble that made him look even more intimidating.

They were sat in a mom ‘n’ pop café, where Mickey seemed to be a regular. The owner came by their table in a dirty apron after a while and greeted Mickey with a grin that showed off several gold teeth. He spoke in rapid-fire Spanish, gesturing towards Yev, and Mickey replied in the same language - fluent, but still tinged with his Chicago accent. The owner responded with astonishment to whatever Mickey had said, and then laughed and clapped Yev on the shoulder, making him jump a little. Mickey spoke again, and the guy scribbled down something on his notepad and walked away.

“What did you say to him?” Yev asked, once the man was gone.

“Told him you’re my kid,” Mickey explained shortly, lighting a cigarette. He took a couple of slow drags while they sat in silence, waiting for their food, and then took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it out.

Without really thinking, Yev took the cigarette from him. He’d only smoked once before, several years ago, and he’d hated it, but it didn’t occur to him to tell Mickey this. Instead he brought the cigarette to his mouth, sucked determinedly, then immediately lapsed into a coughing fit.

As spots danced in front of his eyes, he felt Mickey take the cigarette back from him. “You don’t smoke, huh?”

“No,” Yev wheezed, his eyes watering.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

Yev shrugged.

“Trying to be polite?” Mickey sounded amused.

“I guess. I don’t know why. I swear, I’m not usually polite at all.” Yev scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. I guess I’m not really awake yet.”

“Shoulda hit you with the bat, that would have woken you up.”

“I’ll stick with coffee, thanks.”

As if on cue, the waitress - who seemed to be another one of the café’s owners - arrived with a pot of coffee and two cups. She’d apparently been told who Yev was, because she stared at him shamelessly as she poured his coffee, then smiled and said something to Mickey in Spanish, before patting Yev’s cheek affectionately and whisking away to serve a different table.

Mickey was staring at Yevgeny, chewing his lower lip and frowning. His gaze flicked from Yev’s hair to his face to his clothes and back again. Yev shifted uncomfortably under the examination, and then figured he might as well use it as an opportunity to examine Mickey as well. He noticed that Mickey had bright blue eyes that stood out in contrast to his sullen face, and that his complexion was distinctly paler than Yev’s, despite living in a hot climate. Yev had his mother’s skin - slightly more olive-toned, and prone to tanning in the summer.

“How’s your mom doing?” Mickey queried at last, breaking the silence.

“She’s good,” Yev replied. “She remarried.”

“Figured. Rich dude?”

Yev shifted uncomfortably, not liking what Mickey was implying. “Yeah, he’s pretty well-off.”

Mickey huffed out a short, knowing laugh that pissed Yev off. “Svetlana always did manage to land on her feet.”

“He’s a good guy, my dad,” Yev said sharply, refusing to use the label _stepdad_ for Mickey’s sake. “They got married when I was still in pre-school, so I don’t really remember him not being around.”

Mickey raised his hands in mock-surrender. “Relax, kid, I didn’t mean to disrespect your pops. Whoever he is, he’s a step up from me.” His tone was factual, not self-pitying - like Mickey knew what a fuck-up he was, and had decided he was OK with it.

Fortunately, before the conversation could get any heavier, their breakfast arrived. Yev momentarily forgot his anxiousness as the delicious smell wafted towards them and the plates were slid onto the table. He suddenly realized how starving he was, and tucked in hungrily. Mickey hadn’t been lying; the food was good enough to rival the fancy steaks that Yev and Ian had eaten… when was it? Yesterday? The day before?

“Good, huh?” Mickey said, smirking a little around his mouthful of food. Yev nodded eagerly and used his fork to fold a piece of tortilla around a helping of eggs and salsa, before shoving the whole package in his mouth. It tasted amazing.

“I see why you moved down here,” he muttered thickly.

Mickey tensed a little, eyeing Yev in a calculating way, and Yev quickly realized what he was wondering.

“I mean, Ian told me why you’re down here,” he said, lowering his voice a little. “He told me a lot, actually.”

“Really? ‘Cause he didn’t tell me shit.” Mickey glowered into his coffee cup before taking a long drink.

“Yeah, I was pretty pissed when I found out he hadn’t told you I was coming back with him,” Yev offered. He felt bad for throwing Ian under the bus, but he wanted it to be clear that the ‘surprise!’ approach to this reunion hadn’t been his idea.

Mickey clenched his jaw and nodded. “Hey,” he said, with forced lightness. “You notice him acting weird on the road? I know you don’t really know him but…”

“He told me he’s bipolar,” Yev interrupted. “I don’t think he’s having an episode. He was taking all his meds. He didn’t do anything crazy.”

Mickey’s shoulders dropped a little as he relaxed, and let out a long sigh. “That fuckin’ kid,” he muttered (Yev was distantly amused by Mickey calling Ian a kid). “He means well, but I swear he gets these ideas in his head and he just fucking rolls with them. He didn’t kidnap you, did he?” he asked, only half-jokingly.

“Nope, not this time.”

“He told you about that, huh?”

“It was a long trip. We talked a lot.”

They both took a break from the conversation then, in order to focus on eating. The waitress came by after a while and refilled their coffee cups, and Mickey grinned at her and offered thanks in Spanish. His whole face changed when he smiled - not just in the way the corners of his eyes crinkled and the lines on his cheeks dimpled, but also in the way he no longer seemed like a thug or a dangerous man. He looked warm and friendly and even a little charming. Yev was startled by the transformation.

“They like you here,” he commented, once the waitress had left.

“Yeah, I come in here a lot. I mean, you tasted the food, you can figure why.”

“Honestly, I don’t know why you ever leave.”

Mickey laughed, then seemed to catch himself and withdraw a little. His somber expression returned and he brushed a thumb over his lip as though he wanted to physically wipe the smile away. “Fuck,” he sighed. “I was not fucking ready for this. I only went downstairs to grab some coffee. I’m not even wearing underwear. I’m talking to my kid and I’m fucking commando.”

Yev blinked. “You know, you could very easily have just not told me that. I was fine not knowing.”

“Fucking smartass.” Mickey shook his head. “Jesus, last time I saw you, you weren’t talking yet. Screaming, that you could do. But talking? Nah.”

“I’m potty-trained now, too.”

“Thank _fuck_.”

Yev smiled. He was vaguely troubled by how easy this was. It should be more awkward than this, right? He and Mickey came from different worlds, and they were very different people. Mickey was a criminal - a fugitive. What did it say about Yev, that he was able to exchange such easy banter with this guy? He thought back to how straight-laced, focused, and utterly sure of himself he had been just a few weeks ago. If he’d told that version of himself that he’d end up spending his first spring break driving down to Mexico with his ex-con biological father’s bipolar boyfriend, he probably would have taken it as a dire warning.

“You in school?” Mickey asked, jolting Yev out of his reverie.

“Yeah. NYU.”

“That a good one?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good. Not Ivy League, but…”

“Hey, it’s fucking college. I didn’t even graduate high school.” Mickey furrowed his brow, and then started to ask another question. “Are you, uh…”

He seemed to expect that Yev would know what he was asking, but Yev just stared at him blankly. “Am I what?” he asked, when it became clear Mickey wasn’t going to finish the sentence of his own volition.

Mickey winced, then tried again. “You got a girlfriend?” he asked, too-casually. “Boyfriend?”

 _Ah._ “I’m straight,” Yev said gently. “I have a girlfriend.”

“Cool.”

“I don’t think it runs in families, the gay thing.”

“Didn’t say it did. Just… I don’t care either way, you know?” Mickey’s brow was furrowed, like he was trying to say something important but it wasn’t coming out right. Yev hazarded a guess at what Mickey might want to hear.

“I don’t care either,” he said, feeling awkward as hell but trying to sound sincere.

“Good.” Mickey sniffed. “I mean, I ain’t ashamed of who I am. But I’m glad you’re not an asshole.”

“Woah, hold up, I never said I wasn’t an asshole.”

Mickey smirked at that, and then they were interrupted by Yev’s phone chiming inside his jeans pocket. He pulled it out with a muttered apology and checked the screen.

“Ian wants to know if you’re OK,” he told Mickey. He looked up. “Are you?”

“Fuck no, man. I’m still kind of shell-shocked over here.” But Mickey sighed and tossed his napkin onto his plate. “We should head back, before he gets all wound up. I gotta put on some underwear. And then I gotta yell at that moron for a while.”

“You want some privacy?”

Mickey shook his head dismissively. “You’re family. Might as well get used to the yelling.”

They paid up (Yev offered to cover the cost of breakfast, but Mickey waved him away impatiently and pulled a few crumpled bills from his pocket) and then started to walk back to the house. The sun was beating down strongly now, and Yev tilted his face upwards, basking in the rays. He was definitely going to get a tan while he was down here.

“Hey, there’s one thing Ian wouldn’t tell me,” he said, once they’d been walking for a while. “How’d you and my mom get together in the first place?”

Mickey’s posture stiffened noticeably, and his walking pace slowed. “Does it matter?” he asked gruffly.

“It’s a missing piece of the puzzle.”

“Some puzzles are better left unsolved, kid,” Mickey said darkly. “I ain’t told anyone about that since…” The sentence trailed away. “Shit. I guess I never did tell anyone out loud.”

Yev huffed out a false-sounding laugh. “Come on. How bad could it be?”

Mickey didn’t reply, but his face said plenty. Suddenly Yev felt his stomach turn, wondering what could possibly be so bad that Mickey couldn’t even bring himself to talk about it.

“Fuck,” Mickey sighed, after a loaded silence. He stopped walking and sat down on a low wall. They had taken a shortcut through a quiet back street and there was no one around, but it wasn’t exactly private. Yev concluded that Mickey didn’t want to talk about this in front of Ian.

“Just tell me,” he pleaded quietly. “My whole fucking life my mom tried to shelter me from all this. I didn’t even know your name, let alone that you were gay, and…” He caught himself before he talked about Mickey going to prison and breaking out. He was smart enough not to talk about that stuff in public. “...and all the other stuff,” he finished lamely. “So tell me what happened. I don’t care if it’s ugly. I just want to know.”

“Alright, alright,” Mickey snapped, pulling a face like he had a stomach ache or something. “I ain’t thought about this shit in a long time. It’s kinda like poking a rotten tooth.”

Yev was impatient, but he didn’t press Mickey again. He just sat down on the wall next to his father, and waited for Mickey to collect himself.

“My dad was a fucking asshole,” Mickey began at last. “Like, he was a Nazi - literally a fucking Nazi. And he hated blacks and Asians and Jews, but he hated fags more than anything. And so obviously he didn’t know about me. Until one day he did. He came home early and he caught me and Ian and we were… I mean, there was no way we could have talked our way out of it. It was pretty clear what was going down.”

Yev just nodded, and waited for the story to continue. But Mickey seemed to be struggling already. His face was twitching with these little winces of remembered pain, and he paused to tap a cigarette out of his packet and light it up.

“So, anyway.” His voice was shaking. “My dad figured he could fix me, y’know? So he called up your mom, and she came over, and then he pointed a gun at the two of us and he…” The cigarette was trembling in his fingers, and suddenly Mickey pressed the heels of both his hands into his eye sockets. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Fuck. It was a long time ago. Shouldn’t be this hard.”

“It’s OK,” Yev said automatically, surprised at how calm he sounded.

When Mickey was ready to continue, he took a few deep, steadying breaths, and explained, “See, my dad thought that was how it worked. He figured I was bent, so it was his job as a father to straighten me out. So he pointed his gun at us and he made us do it, and he made Ian watch. We only did it that one time, but your mom got pregnant from it, and my dad told me I had to marry her, and I did. Few months later, you came along.”

He let out a long, shuddering breath then, and turned his face away so he could pull himself together again. Yev's mind was reeling. He had always figured that he hadn’t had a great start, but he hadn’t expected it would be this bad. _I’m a rape baby_ , he thought to himself, numbly.

“Fuck,” Mickey repeated at last, massaging his chest with one hand as if telling the story had physically bruised him. “Asshole’s behind bars for life and he still gives me fucking palpitations.”

“Thanks,” Yev said quietly. “For telling me.”

Mickey looked over at him. He looked sad. “You alright?”

“No,” Yev admitted. “But I’m still glad you told me.”

They sat there a little while longer, while Mickey recovered and Yev digested what he had just learned. Eventually Mickey flicked his burned-down cigarette away and stood up, and they started walking back to the house again.

“One thing I don’t get,” Yev said, thinking back over Mickey’s story. “How did my mom know your dad? Like, why was he able to call her up and get her to come over?”

Mickey froze, as much as it was possible for someone to freeze while still walking. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and then he said, “Shit.”

Yev got a sudden bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Just… I guess I forgot you didn’t know about that part. Ah, _shit_. Look, you’d better ask your mom about that.”

But Yev shook his head impatiently, his mind already racing. “The whole reason I’m here is because Mom didn’t tell me any of this. I can’t wait on her any more. I need to know.”

“Trust me, kid, there’s some things you’re better off not knowing.”

And with that, Mickey confirmed the worst suspicion that Yev had had - the one he had been hoping against hope wasn’t true. He pictured his strict but affectionate mother handing him packed lunches and kissing him on the cheek and telling him to turn the light out when he stayed up too late reading. He remembered her grilling his teachers at parent-teacher conferences until they started to sweat - asking a hundred questions about Yev’s grades and his behavior and making sure he was getting the education they were paying for. He had a mental image of her in nice blouses and mom jeans, picking him up from baseball practice in a big Range Rover.

Nothing that Yev knew about his mother tallied with the story that Mickey had just told him. The woman who raised him wouldn’t have gone over to a Nazi’s house and had sex with his son at gunpoint. And Yev could think of one really, really, really good reason why his mom might have wanted to keep that part of her life so entirely secret from him.

“Mickey, was my mom a prostitute?”


	8. Chapter 8

Ian was sitting at the kitchen table when they got back, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that he nearly spilled when the front door opened. He looked up at them, his face tight with worry. “Hey,” he said. “Everything OK?”

“Oh, yeah,” Yev said, hearing the hysteria in his own voice. “We laughed, we cried, I found out my mom used be a hooker. It’s all good.”

Ian winced. “Ah. Shit.”

“ _You_ ,” Mickey snapped, walking in behind Yev and immediately pointing an accusing finger at Ian. “You and me, outside, right now.”

“Oh come on, Mick. I don’t want the neighbors coming over and complaining about the noise again.”

“What, you want to do this in front of the kid instead?”

“I don’t mind,” Yev said numbly, walking to the fridge and opening it up. “Hey, you guys got anything stronger than beer?”

Ian stood up from the table, flapped his hands at Mickey in a vague and confusing gesture, and then gently gripped Yev’s shoulder and shut the fridge. “I’ll get you some coffee,” he said.

“Nope, no, coffee’s just going to make my brain work faster and I _really_ don’t need that right now.”

“If it makes you feel better, she mostly did hand jobs,” Mickey offered.

Yev slumped down at the kitchen table and dropped his head down onto his folded arms. Mickey crossed the room, grabbed Ian by the collar of his shirt and dragged him out the back door just as Ian was saying, “Why the hell would that make him feel better, Mick?” The door slammed shut behind them and almost immediately Yev heard Mickey start yelling a series of admonishments and insults.

The cat wandered over and jumped up on the table rudely, where it settled down into a crouch and glared at Yev with its big green eyes. He reached out to pet it without really thinking and it hissed at him. He quickly withdrew his hand.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door. Yev glanced at the back door, but Ian and Mickey were yelling so loudly that he doubted they had heard it. When a second, louder knock followed, he stood up and went to answer it.

There was a small-statured Mexican man standing on the doorstep, wearing a long-suffering expression. He looked pointedly over Yev’s shoulder at the source of the noise.

“Sorry,” Yev said. “I’ll go tell them to keep it down.”

He didn’t know if the neighbor spoke English, but apparently he’d communicated well enough, because the man waved his hand and turned away, walking back to his house. Fortunately, Ian and Mickey seemed to have worn themselves out, because Yev met them halfway as he was walking back to the kitchen. Ian looked suitably ashamed, and Mickey was still glowering.

“Uh, your next-door neighbor dropped by…”

“Oh my god, we were only going for like five minutes,” Mickey huffed. “Can’t he just turn the fucking TV up?”

“Or you guys could, like, not scream at each other in the back yard,” Yev suggested.

“Hey, that’s a sacred tradition where we come from,” Ian said, chancing a quick grin. He glanced at Mickey as the latter stomped back to the kitchen to grab a beer, and then spoke again in a more serious tone. “So Mickey told you about Svetlana, huh?”

“He didn’t say it, but I figured it out.” Yev clenched his fists, then leaned back on the sofa, his body tense with anger. “She’s a fucking hypocrite!” he burst out.

“Hey, hey now…”

“No, she is! All my life she told me that people who break the law are idiots, that they’re weak, that they put themselves in that situation. And now I find out she was… doing that.”

Ian sighed. “Look, things aren’t always so simple. Your mom didn’t choose to become a… she didn’t choose that life.”

Yev furrowed his brow, trying to comprehend what Ian was saying through the mist of anger and resentment. “What are you talking about?”

“Ah, I guess you didn’t get the full version of the story. Come on, sit down.” Ian gently grasped Yev’s shoulder and guided him to sit on the couch, then taking a seat opposite in a squashy old armchair.

At that point, Mickey returned with two beers. He held onto one, and handed the other to Yev. To Ian he gave only a frosty glare, and Ian rolled his eyes at him before turning his attention back to Yev.

“You know how your mom got here, from Russia?” Ian asked.

Yev stared at him for a moment. “Oh, you have _got_ to be fucking kidding me!” he exclaimed. “You mean she’s not even from here? She told me she was second generation - that both her parents were dead.”

“Well, that second part might be true,” Ian offered. “But no, your mom came here when she was even younger than you. Her dad sold her into the… trade. She came here in a shipping crate, with no money and no papers, and a boss who wasn’t likely to just let her walk away. As much as someone can be forced into a life of crime, your mom was.”

Ian paused then, and Yev tried to digest what he had just been told. And gradually he felt the anger ebbing away, to be replaced by a feeling of overwhelming sadness and shame. He pictured his mom, younger than he was now, being sold like cattle and shipped to a country she didn’t know, and forced to have sex with strangers for money. How could he blame her for wanting to keep that from her only son? How could he blame her for not wanting to tell him that he was conceived at gunpoint? How could he blame her for wanting to leave that part of her life behind?

“Hey,” Ian said, leaning forward and putting his hand on Yev’s arm. “She got out. For you, she got out. She started a new life. She wanted you to have a better childhood than she did. She told me that, when we were living together. Once you were born, everything she did... she did for you.”

“I know,” Yev replied quietly. “It’s fucked up. But I understand why she didn’t want me to know. Hell, I kind of wish I’d never found out.”

A silence followed, which was surprisingly broken by Mickey. “Hey, uh…” He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Look. Your mom was a real bitch…”

“Mickey!” Ian interrupted, sounding horrified.

“Hey, hey, I’m going somewhere with this.” Mickey turned back to Yev. “She was a real bitch, yeah, but once you were born she was like one of those mom lions with a cub. She used all her super-bitch powers to make sure you were taken care of. She had to fucking blackmail me into paying for the stuff you needed, and she was a real hardass about making me help look after you. You’re lucky, to have a mom like that looking out for you.”

“My mom wasn’t really around much when I was growing up,” Ian added quietly, after a beat. “She was bipolar, like me, but she wouldn’t stay on her meds. Not even for her kids.”

Mickey was looking at Ian now, emotion etched deep on his face. In a silent peace offering, he held his half-empty beer bottle out to Ian, who took it from him with a tentative smile.

“Anyway,” Mickey continued, nodding at Yev. “She did a good job with you. You stayed in school, you’re in fucking college. Straight shot from here to a white picket fence, right?”

There was a loaded pause in which Ian glanced at Yev worriedly. He decided it was as good a time as any to tell Mickey why he’d wanted to come down here.

“My girlfriend’s pregnant.”

Mickey’s eyes widened. “How many months?”

“Just six weeks.”

“She gonna flush it out?”

“ _Mick!_ ”

“Uh, she gonna get an abortion?”

Yev shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re going to talk about it.”

Mickey huffed out a cynical laugh. “Right. You’re gonna talk, but she’s gonna decide. Trust me.”

“I think Yev wanted to ask you for advice,” Ian said pointedly.

“Me?” Mickey stared at Yev disbelievingly. “You want _my_ advice? You see where I ended up, kid?”

“Fine, not advice then,” Yev said, exasperated. “Just… how did you react? When you found out my mom was pregnant?”

Mickey retreated a little at that, and looked down at the rug. “I don’t think you want to hear that story.”

“I just found out my mom used to have sex with men for money,” Yev countered. “Whatever your answer is, I can handle it.”

“Fine.” Mickey held his hand out for the beer bottle, and Ian handed it back to him, watching his boyfriend carefully. Mickey drained the bottle and wiped his mouth before continuing. “Alright, so my dad was the one who told me. And he’d pistol-whipped me, right before he made me and your mom… y’know. So I was still in bed with the mother of all fucking headaches, waiting for my skull to heal up. And he came in and he told me, and he told me I was going to be marrying her, and after he left I crawled to the bathroom and puked.”

Yev focused on keeping his expression calm and neutral.

“I didn’t go to the hospital when you were born, but she brought you round after anyway. I was staying with Ian. Guess I figured if I just ignored you it was like you didn’t exist. But she brought you round and I couldn’t even look at you without seeing it all over again, in my head. So I just shoved some money at her and stayed away. ‘Cause every time I looked at you it all came back, and it made me feel like puking again.”

Yev nodded, like he hadn’t just been told that his biological father had felt sick at the sight of him when he was a baby.

“But anyway,” Mickey carried on heavily. “Shit happened, and me and Ian and your mom ended up living together, and then I guess it was like when people who are real scared of dogs spend a bunch of time with them and get used to them. One day I could look at you and pick you up and I didn’t feel sick any more. You were a cute little fucker. Guess that helped.”

Ian smiled.

“So, yeah,” Mickey concluded. “If you got money that’s a big part of the baby daddy thing taken care of. You like the girl?”

Yev was taken aback by the question, but soon recovered and said, “Sarah? Yeah, she’s great.”

“Well, there you go. You’re already way better off than, like, ninety-nine percent of guys who’ve knocked chicks up by accident. And if it comes to looking after a kid you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. You just shove food in one end and try to keep the other end clean.”

He made it sound so simple, instead of the crisis that it was, but strangely it made Yev feel better. After all, it wasn’t like he and Sarah had been forced to conceive with a gun pointed at them, and he wasn’t going to be forced to marry her. If it came to it they could probably get a small apartment off-campus and raise the baby there. Yev’s dad would be willing to help them out with money, and the fact that he and Sarah didn’t have full-time jobs meant that they’d actually have more spare time than most new parents.

Ian had been watching him as he thought things over, and the corners of his mouth quirked when he saw Yev starting to calm down.

“Thanks,” Yev said at last, to Mickey, who looked a little surprised. “That actually helps a lot.”

His father looked at the ground, embarrassed. “No problem, kid.”


	9. Chapter 9

Ian and Mickey had roughly the same shift patterns - Mickey working as a bouncer, and Ian taking the night shift at the fire station - so Yev mostly slept when they were out and hung out with them during the day. They took him around the town, and showed him their favorite hang-out spots, and told him some of the stories that had accumulated over the years they’d spent here.

On the third day, they all went out on the boat. It was a simple rowing boat with a motor that had been added onto the back, and just enough room in it for three men and a cooler. Yev bought a swimsuit from a little shop at the beach and jumped in the water pretty much as soon as they stopped - diving as deep as he could go before resurfacing, and then floating on his back in the water, squinting up at the sky. Ian joined him after a while, and tried to drag Mickey in as well, only to surrender when Mickey threatened to drown him.

They didn’t act like the other gay couples that Yev knew. If he’d just seen them in passing, he would have assumed they were just drinking buddies, or maybe brothers. They didn’t hold hands when they walked down the street, and they didn’t finish each other’s sentences like Yev and Sarah sometimes did. When they were out on the boat, though, Yev learned to spot the fleeting signs of affection: the way Mickey leaned in as Ian pointed to a boat on the horizon, like he was just trying to see where Ian’s finger was pointing; the way they’d smile at each other, brief and fond; the way Mickey would squeeze Ian’s knee, or punch him playfully in the stomach.

It was certainly different to how Yev’s parents interacted. His mom would kiss his dad firmly on the cheek every morning, and press close to his side at dinner parties, and straighten his tie for him before patting him on the chest and smiling up at him broadly. Mickey and Ian’s signs of affection were quieter and more subtle, but also more natural - like they didn’t realize they were doing it.

By the time they finally headed home, Yev could feel the warmth in his skin that meant he’d turn red the next day, and brown a couple of days after that. Sarah commented on it when he started up a video chat with her, laying down on the couch with one arm slung behind his head.

“You look like a tomato,” she cackled.

“Thanks, babe, you look good too.”

“You know, Elmo was actually my first ever celebrity crush.”

“Alright, that’s it…” Yev started to close the laptop lid, grinning as he heard her protesting through the speakers. He opened the laptop up again.

“Now please, stop, I’m very sensitive.”

“Try aloe.”

He smiled at the screen. Sarah had been getting ready for bed and her frizzy hair was even more out of control than usual. Yev liked to bury his fingers in it when he kissed her, and just then he wished more than ever that he could be in her room with her so he could do just that.

“So…” she said, her expression turning a little more sober. “How are you feeling about stuff?”

“Stuff?” he stalled.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was being too vague. How are you feeling about my egg that you fertilized with your sperm, which has now developed into an embryo that’s attached to my uterine wall?” She dropped a hand onto her belly, to emphasize the point even further.

“Right. That stuff.”

Sarah was still smiling, but even on video Yev could see the tightness at the corners of her eyes that meant she was joking to cover up her anxiety. Suddenly, he felt shitty for trying to avoid the subject.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” he said quietly. “And I know we’re going to talk when I get back, and figure it all out then. But… whatever you want to do, I’m going to be there. Whether it’s a clinic in a few weeks or a maternity ward in a few months.”

Her expression softened, and then crumpled a little, like she was about to cry. But she pulled herself together quickly, and forced a smile back onto her face. “You’d better be. If I have to deal with this by myself I’ll probably just panic and give the baby to a circus or something.”

“Well, that can still be Plan C.”

That made her laugh, and when she laughed something tightened in Yev’s chest. He wondered if this was what love felt like. He wondered if he and Sarah would still be together after twenty years, like Ian and Mickey were.

“I miss you,” he sighed.

She looked a little taken aback, since he wasn’t usually inclined towards random proclamations of affection, but she offered the same sincerity in return. “I miss you too, Yevvy.”

He set the laptop down on the coffee table, angled towards him, and she set hers down on her bedside table in the same manner. They left the video chat running and fell asleep like that - hundreds of miles away, but still facing each other.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Yev was woken by the sound of metal clinking against metal, and he slowly stirred from his pretzel position on the worn-out couch. When he finally managed to sit up, he saw Mickey in the kitchen, peering under the sink, a toolkit on the floor next to him. He leaned back, his nose wrinkled at whatever smells were emanating from the sink, and saw Yev looking at him.

“Hey,” he greeted. “Sorry, was trying not to wake you.”

“It’s cool,” Yev said, stretching and wincing at the sore muscles in his back - a combination of too much swimming and another night spent sleeping in an awkward position. “What are you doing?”

“Damn p-trap sprung a leak,” Mickey explained, holding up an old section of pipe and then tossing it back onto the kitchen floor. “Gotta replace it.”

“Can I help?”

Mickey glanced over at him. “Yeah, sure. Hold the new part in place while I attach it.”

Yev padded over to him, and then stepped back and groaned in disgust when his bare foot landed in a cold puddle of water that looked none too clean. He didn’t want Mickey to think he was a wuss, though, so he stepped around the puddle and knelt down next to the sink, peering inside.

“Here,” Mickey said, jerking his head to indicate the new piece of pipe that he was holding in place. “Take over?”

Yev obliged, and Mickey set about tightening the seals at both ends. His tattooed hands worked efficiently, the tendons on the back of them straining as he secured the new piece of pipe.

“So you’re heading back in a couple days, right?” Mickey said, not taking his eyes off the plumbing.

“Yeah,” Yev said. “But I’ll try to come back and visit when I can. Maybe next summer?”

A troubled look passed over Mickey’s face, and Yev saw him clench his jaw a little. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “You don’t need to do that.”

Yev frowned. “I want to,” he insisted. “Look, I know I was kind of a dick at first, but… you’re my father. One of them, anyway. I don’t want it to be another eighteen years before we see each other again.”

“Hey, run the tap for me?”

Yev was frustrated, but he reached up anyway and fumbled for the faucet, finally letting a stream of cold water run into the sink. They both watched the new piping, but there were no leaks - just the sound of rushing water, the pitch of it changing as the new p-trap filled. Mickey nodded in satisfaction and closed the cupboard, grabbing a towel to clean off his hands. As he was tidying his tools away, he finally spoke again.

“I don’t want that either. What I meant was… you ain’t gonna have to travel all this way to see me.”

“What do you mean?”

Mickey’s eyes were heavy and sad, and Yev suddenly got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Mickey, what are you talking about?”

“I’m ah…” Mickey scratched his temple with his thumbnail. “I’m turning myself in.”

There was silence for a few long seconds, as Yev tried to figure out if he’d heard Mickey correctly, and then if Mickey was joking or being serious. “What?” he demanded.

“I’m turning myself in. Gonna head up to the border, tell them who I am, let them take me to the cops. I still got fourteen years on my sentence, more if they add extra time for me busting out. But with good behavior and overcrowding I could be out in half that time.”

“Or you could stay here,” Yev snapped. “And not go to jail at all. Why the hell would you want to turn yourself in?” His chest was heaving, a toxic combination of anger and fear clogging his brain. But Mickey just looked calm and resigned. He turned around and leaned back against the cupboard, his legs sprawled out.

“For Ian,” he replied simply.

“I’m pretty sure Ian doesn’t want you to go back to prison!”

Mickey looked down at his hands. “Y’know, Ian gave up everything to come down here,” he said. “He gave up his job, his home, his fucking family. And we’ve had a good run. But I can’t keep him here, not any more. It ain’t fair.”

“He wants to be here!” Yev countered furiously.

“No.” Mickey shook his head firmly. “He wants to be with me. He _has_ to be here because we can’t live in the states. We can’t get married. We can’t have kids. We’re always going to be looking over our shoulders. And if I get caught, Ian could go down too.”

Yev thought about this, his anger slowly ebbing away as Mickey continued talking.

“But if I turn myself in, serve my time, we’ll probably still be in our forties when I get out. We’ll still have time to do all that stuff. And I wanna do that for Ian, make that sacrifice or whatever. Like he made a sacrifice for me.”

He didn’t look happy. But he looked determined, and Yev realized there was no way he was going to be able to change Mickey’s mind.

“When?” he asked hoarsely. “When are you going to turn yourself in?”

The lines on Mickey’s face deepened as he visibly tried to hold it together. “Today.”

“What the _fuck?_ What’s the fucking rush?”

“You don’t get it.” Mickey laughed humorlessly. “I decided to do this _four years ago_. And I just kept putting it off, and putting it off, and putting it off. I figured there was no rush, you know? I could do it any time, so why not next week, or next month? If I don’t do it now, I never will.”

Yev maneuvered himself so that he was sitting leaned back against the wall opposite Mickey. He looked down at the ugly pattern of the tiles on the kitchen floor. All he could think about was Ian coming home and finding Mickey gone, and Yev having to explain where he was, or hand Ian a note with the explanation.

“You know,” he said. “You missed, like, eighteen Christmases and birthdays. I never got a present from you. Not even a card.”

Mickey furrowed his brow, like he didn’t understand where this change of subject had come from. “What, you want me to go get you a cake or something?”

“No, I want you to do me a favor. Just one favor. That’s it. And then I’ll consider us even.”

“If you’re going to ask me not to do it…” Mickey sighed.

“Not that. I know you won’t agree to that. There’s something else I want you to do for me.”

“OK, what?”

There was a pause while Yev just stared at Mickey in exasperation. Then he leaned forward, and cuffed Mickey hard round the side of his head.

“Ow, what the fuck…?”

“ _Tell Ian_ ,” Yev snapped. “Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you two that you keep trying to do shit behind each other’s back? First Ian bringing me down here, now you running back to jail. Have you ever heard of this little thing called ‘communication’? Trust me, it makes life a whole lot easier.”

Mickey glared at him. “Oh right, I’m glad I’ve got a fucking nineteen year-old expert on life to help me out.”

“Someone’s got to be the fucking adult here.” Yev threw a soaked rag at Mickey, who caught it just before it hit his face. “And give it until tomorrow. Tell Ian today, head out tomorrow. Give him one last day before you go.”

“He won’t let me go.”

“What’s he going to do, sit on you? Just explain it to him like you just explained it to me. About wanting to get married and have kids and stuff. I’ll back you up, if you want.”

“I thought you hated this plan?”

“I do. But if I can’t stop you, I can at least help make things easier for Ian. I owe him that much.”

Mickey was staring at him like he’d grown a second head, but after a beat he smiled sadly. “You sure you’re my kid?” he asked.

A flippant reply was on the tip of Yev’s tongue, but he stopped it before it could escape and instead looked Mickey sincerely in the eye. “Yeah,” he replied. “I’m sure."


	10. Chapter 10

Mickey’s plan to turn himself in did not go down well with Ian. Once again, Yev found himself opening the door to their exasperated next-door neighbor and trying to sound apologetic enough that he could be understood despite the language barrier. The soothing effect was undermined somewhat by Ian hurling an empty beer bottle across the room, where it shattered against a wall, but at least that finally convinced the man to get off the doorstep and go back home.

Over the course of the day, Yev watched Ian go through the various stages of grief - denial (“you’re not going anywhere, no fucking way”), anger (“where the _fuck_ did this even come from?”), and bargaining (“just give me a week, please, stay here one more week and if you still feel the same I’ll drive you to the border myself”). He cycled through those three until he worked himself into a state of exhaustion, and the next day he seemed to be stuck in a hybrid of the last two stages: acceptance, and depression.

Yev had made breakfast for them all, so that Mickey could have one last really good stack of pancakes before he went back behind bars, but Ian just poked at his food with a fork.

“Eat something,” Mickey ordered quietly, watching Ian across the table with a heavy expression. “You know what happens when you take your meds on an empty stomach. You really want to be dealing with that on the road?”

Yev expected Ian to argue, but instead he just stabbed his fork into the pancake stack and carved out a chunk, shoving it into his mouth and chewing mechanically. Maybe he was thinking about the fact that this would be the last time, for a long time, that Mickey would be able to nag him about his meds.

Mickey had a good poker face, but Yev caught him looking over at Ian a few times with a worried expression, chewing on his bottom lip, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. If they had lived together for more than a decade then Mickey must have seen quite a few of Ian’s manic and depressive episodes come and go, and once he was behind bars he wouldn’t be able to look out for Ian any more. Not only that, but Mickey was probably worried that this - his leaving - could be the trigger for a new episode.

Whatever doubts Mickey might have had weren’t enough to change his mind, however. After breakfast he put the dishes in the sink and then glanced at the clock at the microwave and said, “We should head out now. It’s a six-hour drive. I wanna get there before it gets dark.”

“What difference does it make?” Ian asked dully.

“Well, I’m gonna be walking the last mile by myself, and it’d be pretty shitty if I got hit by a car before I can turn myself in.”

“Walking?” Yev frowned. “Why are you going to be walking?”

“I can’t exactly have Ian drop me off. They could say he’s an accomplice or some shit and arrest him too. Better I show up by myself.”

It made sense, but the mental image of Mickey walking along the side of the road to meet a miserable fate, completely alone, was like a punch to the chest for Yev, and it looked like Ian was picturing the same thing. He was glaring down at his barely-touched plate of food, his jaw clenched tightly.

“I’m coming too,” Yev announced, without even really needing to think about it.

Mickey looked up at him, surprised. After a moment of silence, Ian said, “It’s a two-seater car.”

“So I’ll pay for a rental.”

“You don’t gotta do that…” Mickey began to argue.

“You’d rather have Ian drive back by himself?”

“Hey,” Ian protested, his voice a little hoarse. “You don’t have to look after me.”

“Mickey’s my dad. You’re basically my stepdad. You brought me down here and you let me stay in your house, so this is my business now - just as much as it is yours. I’m coming with you. End of story.”

 

* * *

 

They rented a sensible little Toyota, and Yev took over driving from Ian once they were a couple of miles away from the rental depot. Ian silently walked around and climbed into the back seat next to Mickey, who looked over at him with a mixture of surprise and trepidation. Ian slid into the middle seat so that he and Mickey were sat right next to each other, and laid his hand on Mickey’s thigh, looking dead ahead with a stiff, determined expression, but also slowly rubbing his thumb back and forth over Mickey’s knee

Yev was confused at first, given how angry Ian had been and how much he resented the fact that they were driving to the border at all. But after a few minutes of driving and occasionally catching sight of Ian’s tormented expression in the rear-view mirror, he figured it out. Ian was pissed off, yes, but not pissed off enough to waste the last precious few hours that he and Mickey had together.

This suspicion was confirmed when they stopped for gas and Yev emerged from paying to see Ian and Mickey kissing frantically in the back seat - Ian’s hands cradling Mickey’s head like it was a priceless artifact, and Mickey’s hands fisted in the back of Ian’s shirt. Yev quickly looked away, feeling like an intruder, and went back into the gas station to buy a pack of gum. When he came out the second time their lips were no longer locked together, but Ian had his head pressed against Mickey’s shoulder and Mickey was slowly carding his fingers through Ian’s hair, murmuring something to him that Yev couldn’t hear.

They didn’t pull apart when Yev climbed back into the driver’s seat, but Mickey turned his head to look out the window, his eyes moist. His fingers still massaged Ian’s scalp in a slow, careful rhythm.

Driving down, the journey had passed quickly because Yev had slept through it. Driving back, it passed quickly because he didn’t want it to end. He didn’t want to have to watch Ian and Mickey say goodbye. He didn’t want to part ways with the father he’d only just reconnected with. He wanted to scream with how unfair it was that Mickey was about to be sent back to prison for a crime he’d committed almost two decades ago.

Eventually they passed a sign that told them the border was just twenty miles away, and then a ten mile sign, then a five mile sign. When the one mile sign came up Yev pulled over to the side of the road, looked down at the steering wheel and said, quietly, “We’re here.”

In the rear-view mirror Mickey nodded jerkily, before shifting Ian off his shoulder so that he could climb out of the car. He wasn’t taking anything with him - not even a wallet or a phone. He didn’t want to bring with him any clue as to where he’d been since he escaped, or who he’d been with.

Ian climbed out after him, looking lost. Mickey swallowed hard, folded his arms tightly, and then looked up at Ian with a forced smile.

“I’ll call you,” he said. “As soon as I can. As soon as it’s safe. I figure once they sort through the red tape and get me back in the slammer it’ll be a couple of weeks before I get visitation privileges.”

There was no response from Ian, who was staring at the ground, blank-faced. Mickey sighed, and put a hand on his shoulder, then drew him in for a hug. It was then that Ian finally reacted, gripping the back of Mickey’s jacket tightly and pressing his face against the side of Mickey’s neck.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Yev heard him beg, his voice cracked and broken.

Mickey’s face contorted with anguish, and then he buried it against Ian’s shoulder. “I gotta go,” he mumbled. “I gotta go, Ian.”

“You _don’t_. It’s not too late. We could still turn the car around and drive right back home.”

“I know,” Mickey whispered. “I know.” But he pushed Ian gently away and turned to Yev, who was on the verge of tears.

Part of him thought that it was stupid. He barely knew these people, after all. But the bigger part of him was wrecked by the expression on Mickey’s face, so when Mickey reached out for a handshake Yev stepped forward instead, and hugged his father, and murmured in his ear:

“I’ll make sure he’s OK.”

He felt Mickey’s fingers grip his shoulder tightly in gratitude.

Eventually they drew apart, and Mickey turned his gaze back to Ian, who still looked devastated and was shaking his head mechanically, like he didn’t realize he was doing it. Mickey stepped close to him, touched his cheek, and kissed him briefly on the mouth.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks, OK?” he said, like he was just going on a business trip.

“Don’t,” Ian whispered again, but he sounded defeated.

They watched Mickey walk away, his head bowed a little and his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He glanced back, just once, then lowered his head again and kept walking. When he was out of sight, Yev gently guided Ian back to the car and climbed into the driver’s seat again.

They didn’t talk. Yev could see Ian watching the clock - watching the minutes tick by. It would take Mickey about twenty minutes to walk to the border, and before long the window of opportunity for them to turn the car around and chase after him had closed. When twenty-five minutes had gone by, and Mickey had surely turned himself in to Border Patrol, Ian said, “Stop the car.”

Yev glanced over at him searchingly, and then obliged, pulling over to the side of the road. As soon as they stopped Ian flung his door open and swung his legs out of the car. He didn’t get out, though; just leaned forward, with his shoulders lowered and head bowed. Yev wondered if he was going to be sick, but he just sat there, breathing heavily.

Then Ian let out a short, frustrated yell and hurled something away from the car. The object skittered over the dusty grassland and came to a halt near a wire fence. Yev frowned, and then got out of the car and ran over to see what Ian had thrown.

He found it buried in a patch of grass. An orange pill bottle, half full. Ian’s medication. Yev tensed his jaw, closed his fist around the pill bottle, and walked back to the car.

“No,” he said firmly to Ian, who had his head in his hands. “You’re not doing this.”

“I can’t do it,” Ian said, his voice muffled. “I can’t fucking do it. I can’t go home and go to bed tonight without him.”

“So take the couch, and I’ll take the bed tonight. But I’m not going to let you fall apart.”

Ian lifted his head then, his eyes red and wet and furious. “Who the _fuck_ do you think you are?” he demanded. “You don’t even know him. Why are you even still here? He’s gone. You’re done. Go back to New York.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“That’s not up to you!”

“Yeah, it is.”

Ian clenched his fists so tightly that the skin over the knuckles turned white. Yev looked down at them, and then back up at Ian’s face.

“You wanna hit me?” he demanded. “Fine. Hit me, if it’ll make you feel better.”

Despite the bold words, Yev was pretty terrified at the thought that Ian might actually hit him. He’d never been punched - not really, not by someone who meant it. But his fear ebbed away as Ian’s fists slowly unclenched, and the anger drained from his expression until he just looked hollow with despair.

“How am I supposed to live without him?” Ian asked in a small voice.

Yev sighed. In his nineteen short years, he’d never felt so old. Finally he gave the best answer he knew.

“Temporarily.”


	11. Epilogue

The last time Yev had been in Chicago was when he was too young to remember it, and after hearing all of Mickey and Ian’s horror stories about the South Side he was pretty nervous about actually visiting. Driving through, however, the gentrification that had set in over the past decade was very apparent in all the neat little coffee shops and clothing boutiques.

Lip and Mandy Gallagher’s house was a new build on a quiet street, and as Yev pulled up he saw bright plastic toys scattered over the front lawn, and a couple of kids’ bikes leaning against the fence. He parked on the street and then looked back over his shoulder to address the car’s only other passenger.

“Alright,” he said. “You ready for this?”

Abby just stared at him, and then blew an impressive series of spit bubbles. Yev smiled at her and then climbed out of the car. He walked around to the other side and then unbuckled Abby and lifted her out of her car seat, bringing her to his chest with one hand supporting her bottom and the other on her back. Immediately her tiny, sticky hands grabbed hold of his T-shirt and she wiped her face on his shoulder. Yev didn’t even react; he was pretty used to being covered in baby spit. At least it was only spit this time.

There was a burst of commotion inside the house when he knocked on the door. He heard a woman yelling, and a kid yelling back, and then the sound of someone running down the stairs, and then finally the door opened and Ian was on the other side of it, a little breathless.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, Abby.” He reached out and grabbed one of her hands as she waved at him, and she responded by wrapping her fist around his thumb. He play-acted being too weak to escape from her grip, and she grinned and shrieked excitedly.

Just as Yev was stepping inside the house he heard a call from a nearby room. “Is that him?”

“That’s him,” Ian hollered back, rolling his eyes apologetically at Yev.

A woman emerged into the wall, wiping her hands on a tea towel and staring at Yev like he was an alien. He recognized her from photos. “Hi,” he said. “So you’re my Aunt Mandy?”

“Holy shit,” she exclaimed, by way of response. “I haven’t seen you since you were, like, two. You look _so_ much like Mickey.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

“You want to come in for coffee?”

“We’ve got to head out if we want to be there in time for visitation,” Yev explained. “But maybe after?”

“Sure, stay for dinner. It’s just pot roast, but…”

“I love pot roast.”

She smiled at him, then turned her attention to Abby. “Hey, sweetie,” she said, patting Abby’s dark curls. “I’m your great aunt.”

“You’re not that great,” Ian commented, earning himself a jab in the ribs from Mandy. He grinned and kissed her on the cheek before following Yev and Abby out the door.

“No Sarah?” Ian asked as he climbed into the front passenger seat.

“Nah. She doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to study in a baby-free apartment, so…”

“Right.” Ian looked over at Yev critically. “You look tired.”

Yev laughed a little crazily. “Yeah, the thing about not getting any sleep when you have a baby is… not exaggerated.”

“You holding up OK?”

Yev bit back a flippant response. “It’s harder than I thought it would be,” he admitted. “Not that I thought it would be easy, but…”

“I know. Nothing prepares you for it.”

“I just wish I’d picked a less intense major.”

Yev had switched majors not long after he get back from spring break in his freshman year. Until then, the plan had been to become an accountant so that he could get a job at his dad’s company, but he’d made the decision to start working towards becoming a lawyer instead. Not so he could take on Mickey’s case (by the time he was fully qualified Mickey would probably be getting out anyway), but so that he could help other people like Mickey. People who had made mistakes, and were about to have their lives ruined because of them.

But if he could learn enough to advise Mickey on how to get a better chance at parole - well, that was just a bonus.

“How about you?” Yev asked. “You still looking for a new place?”

“I think I found somewhere now, thank god. I need to move out. Lip and Mandy are happy to have me at their place, but they don’t feel the same about the cat.”

“Is the cat still an asshole?”

“I swear, he’s become even more of an asshole since we moved up here.” A pensive expression fell over Ian’s face, like a shadow. “God. I know it’s dumb, but lately all I can think about is what happens if the stupid cat dies, and I have to tell Mickey during visitation.”

“The cat’s not that old, right?”

“I don’t know. Could be two, could be ten.”

“My dad brought home a kitten when I was about five. He’s still going.”

“It’s not about the cat, really.” Ian sighed and leaned back in his seat. “It’s going to be something, sooner or later. Some other big thing that Mickey misses because he’s behind bars. Like he missed Abby being born.”

“I don’t think we could have fit him in the waiting room anyway,” Yev said, smiling a little at the memory. Sarah came from a typically close-knit Jewish family, and when she went into labor her parents had shown up at the hospital along with both sets of her grandparents, her two brothers and her sister, and several aunts and uncles. One of her grandmothers had brought a lasagne.

They didn’t have far to drive. By sheer dumb luck, Mickey had been placed at MCC Chicago, right in the middle of the city and just a few miles away from the South Side. Mickey said it was better than the last prison he’d been in, and Ian was able to visit him several times a week.

Yev was nervous as they walked in; he had never been in a prison before, and he hadn’t seen Mickey since they’d dropped him off at the border. They’d had a few conversations over the phone, and Yev had sent Mickey a picture of Abby after she was born, but this almost felt like meeting Mickey for the first time all over again.

Ian knew the drill, and handed over both their IDs with a bored expression as Yev hoisted Abby a little higher on his hip and looked around at all the other families here to visit their loved ones. He’d thought that Abby would be the only child, for some reason, but there were two elementary school-aged kids chatting animatedly in the line, and a woman holding a squirming toddler to her chest.

Finally they were waved through a metal detector and then led through to the visitation room, where they sat for a while at a little table, waiting for everyone else to get settled down. Then there was a harsh buzzing noise and the prisoners started filing past the window between the visitation room and the hallway outside and Ian pointed and said, “There he is,” and there he was.

Mickey was already grinning when he walked in, meeting Ian and Yev’s eyes briefly before fixing his attention on Abby. Ian stood up as Mickey approached, and then grabbed him and pulled him into a full-bodied hug until one of the COs barked at them to separate. They did so reluctantly, and Mickey sat down on the other side of the table. He was wearing a dishwater-grey jumpsuit, with the lower half of his dragon tattoo just peeking out from under one of the sleeves, but otherwise he looked much the same as he had the last time Yev had seen him.

“Hey, kid,” Mickey greeted, offering Yev a wry smile. “So this is my granddaughter, huh?”

Yev’s face split into a broad, proud smile. “Yeah. This is Abby.”

“Can I hold her?”

Yev glanced at the nearest CO, then stood up and held Abby out as Mickey reached for her.

“No touching,” the CO snapped on cue.

Mickey threw him a disgusted look. “It’s my fucking grandkid, man, come on. I’ve never seen her before.”

The CO gave Mickey a disdainful look that made it clear what he thought of a man becoming a grandfather in his thirties. “No. Touching.”

“Tell you what, you can fucking strip-search me after if it’ll make you happy.” Mickey threw the guy a wink, and Yev heard the scuff of Ian kicking him under the table.

“Jesus, Collins, let the man hold his granddaughter,” another CO cut in impatiently. The first pulled a face, but looked away, and Mickey leaned forward and gently took Abby from Yev - the crude word tattooed on his right hand contrasting strangely with her sunflower-yellow dress.

“Wow, look at you,” Mickey breathed. He looked a little awkward holding her, like he wasn’t sure how to do it, but then he settled her into the crook of his arm and held her secure with his free hand, and looked down at her as she looked up at him with the single-minded fascination of an infant confronted by someone new. “Wow,” Mickey said again. “How old is she now?”

“Six months,” Yev replied, quietly moved by the sight of his kid in Mickey’s arms. He’d felt the same way the first time he’d brought Abby home to his parents. His mom had been predictably horrified when he’d told her that Sarah was pregnant, but she’d changed her tune once she actually saw Abby and held her.

Svetlana knew that Yev had made contact with Mickey. He came home one weekend not long after the trip and dropped two bombshells in the space of five minutes: that his girlfriend was pregnant and they’d decided to keep the baby, and that he’d been down to Mexico for spring break to visit his biological father. It was hard to tell which revelation had devastated her more. But after only a little consideration, Yev had decided not to tell his mother that he knew _everything_ she’d tried to keep from him. She’d left that life behind for a reason, and it would have been cruel to confront her about how she came to America, and what she’d done for a living after she arrived.

His dad, at least, had been supportive from the start. He’d squeezed Yev’s shoulder reassuringly and said that he was proud of him for standing by Sarah, and then immediately offered to help them out with money once the baby arrived.

Mickey, meanwhile, was beaming with pride and didn’t seem to know what to do with it all. He looked around, then called over to the table next to theirs, where another prisoner was having a murmured conversation with his wife.

“Hey!” Mickey called out. “Hey, Ramirez!”

The other prisoner looked over at Mickey distractedly.

“My grandkid,” Mickey boasted, shifting Abby in his arms.

“Good for you, Milkovich,” Ramirez replied drily, before turning back to his wife.

Mickey held on to Abby for the rest of the visit, occasionally bouncing her in his arms when she started to grizzle. Yev glanced over and saw Ian looking at Mickey and the baby with a complicated expression. He knew that Ian and Mickey had already started talking about looking for a surrogate when Mickey got out, and that Ian was determined that Mickey would provide the sperm sample, since he didn’t want to risk their kid inheriting his bipolar disorder. But all of that was years down the line still.

“I think I found a place for us to live,” Ian said, when their visitation time was drawing to a close.

“Yeah?” Mickey asked, looking across the table at Ian with a fond smile. “South Side?”

“Uh-huh. Over on Wolcott.” Ian sighed heavily, glancing at the clock. “Fuck. I wish I could walk out of here with you today and take you there.” He’d been fairly upbeat for most of the visit, but now it was like a rain cloud had moved in overhead, and his expression was pained and angry.

“Hey,” Mickey said gently. “You remember what I told you, the night I came out?”

Ian’s brow furrowed in confusion, then cleared as he remembered what Mickey was talking about, and softened. “Yeah,” he said.

Yev looked back and forth between them, but neither was apparently inclined to let him in on the secret. They seemed to be lost in their own little world.

The buzzer cut through the moment, and there was a scrape of chair legs on the floor as the prisoners reluctantly stood up. Mickey did so as well, looking down at Abby tenderly as he dislodged her from the bend of his arm and held her out for Yev to take.

“OK, Ab, say bye to Grandpa,” Yev instructed, holding her against his chest so that she was still facing Mickey, and puppeting her hand to make her wave at him. She squealed and kicked her legs.

“Grandpa,” Mickey repeated, chuckling, waving at the baby. He was one of the last inmates left in the room, and Yev could see the COs getting restless.

“Move it, Milkovich,” one of them snapped.

“Yes, sir!” Mickey replied mockingly, and then he darted forward and kissed Ian hard on the mouth, cupping his cheek and lingering for just a second before the CO yelled and began marching over to them, his baton drawn. Mickey pulled back with a shit-eating grin and raised his hands innocently, backing out of the room. They watched him walk past the window, and right before he disappeared out of sight he flipped them off. Ian laughed.

The Chicago summer was in full effect when they walked out, the sun beating down and warming the streets. Yev thought he saw Ian wiping the corner of his eye, but when he turned around he seemed fully composed.

“So,” he said. “How about I show you where me and Mickey grew up?”

Yev smiled. “I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, and for all your lovely comments!


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